Writing stable and FAST applications

r4nd0mch4r

HI! =)

So far I have done a few small php driven websites and a medium sized webshop driven by php/mysql.

My latest project is a portal that is supposed to have a huge MySQL database and a lot of hits per second... (it's actually a network of portals but let's keep it simple =) ).

So the code MUST be FAST and STABLE. I am not a newbie, I actually design & code for a living, but I do realise that there are people here with a lot of experience here so I am asking for tips, help, urls, ... =)

So please post here things I should avoid using, I should learn using, etc...

For instance:

1) Is it better to have a huge (1000 and more lines) file or is it better to use include() all the time?

2) Do applications that use classess (OOP) run faster than the ones they don't use OOP?

3) We have a mysql/php generated menu. Is it faster/better to always contact MySQL server when generating or should we just keep the $mysql_query_result in a SESSION[] variable?

I'll certainly post a lot more questions, but this should get me started =)

laters, r4

________

It's not such a big difference if you wirte long scripts or use include - but consider the time it will take you to update the pages.
Classes are slower. (Not much)
Fetch the menu from the database. If you got that many visitors you don't want to store the menu in a session for each visitor - since the menu are stored on the server.

Take a look at the function [MAN]microtime/MAN - use it to test the speed of your scripts.

mtimdog

It still has to parse all the lines...so not too much difference i suppose
If you're doing multiple portals--lots of reused code, go with the classes.
automatically generate the menu into a file (.js I assume) when changed, or every hour with a cron-job.

bastien

index index index...

also use LIMIT in the sql query to reduce the load on the server to manageable chunks (Page the data)

It will be harder to speed up the php code than to optimize the sql query. You can get far better returns by starting with these

Weedpacket

Originally posted by ????????
3. Fetch the menu from the database. If you got that many visitors you don't want to store the menu in a session for each visitor - since the menu are stored on the server.

Or write your own session handlers to store the session data in a database (filesystem-based session storage is just the default behaviour). (Of course, this depends on how variable the menu is for each user. If it's the same for everyone, a single cached copy would be smarter than millions.)