> So you are saying that a database access is faster than a file access? I find > that hard to believe, but do not have any evidence of the contrary.
As a general rule of thumb, databases are faster for small bits of data and the file system is faster for larger data. Both the filesystem and the database have memory caches, so reading data from a file or the database repeatedly doesn't require going to the disk. The problem with php sessions is that they force a write on every request, which requires going to the disk every request. This could be mitigated with memcached or memory tables, but that has a whole host of other problems. I think if i had a session performance problem (which I don't) I'd use a hybrid database/memcached solution that only writes if the session has actually changed. That way, you would only have to hit the disk if required and your would be able to restart mysql/memcached without destroying every session. Regards, John Campbell _______________________________________________ New York PHP Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online http://www.nyphpcon.com Show Your Participation in New York PHP http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php
