database vs file access times ?

[iwindsurf]

Hoping this is the right place to post.....

I've got a website running on postnuke and I use a lot of 'blocks' on the front page and this slows down the page generation time so I've altered the code for each block so that after generating the html it then saves it to a txt file.

Next time the block is run I check access times of the update script and the text file, using fileatime(), and if the update script hasn't been run I load the text file.

My question is - is this saving me time ? the page generation times seem quicker but do any experts out there have information on this ??

Many thanks
iwindsurf(.co.uk)

[laserlight]

In my opinion it should be faster, since static methods tend to be faster than dynamic methods.

However, you probably should do some time-based testing, I think some users have posted classes/modules to do such tests, so just search and see.