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PHP opening / closing DB connections

  • 25-07-2013 09:20AM
    #1
    dahayeser
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 156 ✭✭


    I have developed a web application for a company and using PHP, HTML, JavaScript etc. Initially it was used just a team but it has got a nice bit of exposure and now the plan is to roll it out across all groups and possibly even all sites. Obviously this is great but I reckon I now need to look at performance.

    There are a lot of AJAX calls in the app and at the moment for every call I open a database connection, retrieve my data, then close a database connection.

    Is this inefficient and is there a better solution? If I leave the connection open (persistent connection) and people just 'x' the window rather than logging out via the app logout button (where I could trigger clean up) there would be a build up of unreleased DB connections which would I think would eventually cause the a connection failure due to running out of DB connections..

    Is opening and closing on the call the safest and most reliable way of doing this?

    Thanks in advance,
    Sean
    Tagged:


Comments

  • #2
    Ziycon
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,991 ✭✭✭Ziycon


    Have a look at caching some of the database data so you don't have to query the DB every time.


  • #3
    CreepingDeath
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,015 ✭✭✭CreepingDeath


    dahayeser wrote: »
    There are a lot of AJAX calls in the app and at the moment for every call I open a database connection, retrieve my data, then close a database connection.

    Is this inefficient and is there a better solution?

    I don't use PHP but what you need is database connection pooling.


  • #4
    colm_c
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,011 ✭✭✭colm_c


    For each request to your webserver, you do need to open and close the DB if you're using it, otherwise you'll have a bunch of open connections to the DB which will hog the connection pool as mentioned above. AFAIK these un-used connections get closed if not in use.

    To be honest you'll get more bang for buck for performance with simple things:

    - appropriate DB indexes
    - appropriate fields in your DB, e.g. using a varchar(255) for holding a 50 digit number is a waste.
    - rewriting your SQL for performance/speed, and benchmarking it

    In your code you could then try different options for doing the same thing in php, here's some PHP performance tips:
    http://blog.castsoftware.com/10-tips-to-speed-up-your-php-applications/

    From an architecture point of view, you could look at:
    - Using an appropriately tuned and configured webserver/php setup
    - Using an MVC framework which might help with caching and logical separation of your data
    - Using Varnish or some other web accelerator
    - Using a noSQL DB for some of your data
    - DB slave/master with different servers for read vs write
    - load balancing multiple web servers
    - etc.


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