Brian Swan has a new post to his blog sharing some tips you can use to get the best performance out of your Windows applications by tuning Wincache.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post that showed how to improve the performance of PHP applications on Windows by using the IIS output caching module. Using the output caching module can have significant positive impact on application performance since pages are served from cache without executing any PHP code. However, this very strength can also be a drawback depending on how your application is built. Because entire pages are cached, using output caching may not be ideal for pages that have multiple data sources.

He points to the Wincache extension as an alternative to the full-page caching with it's built-in opcode caching (you get for "free" just by installing). He mentions this and a few other features that come with it like the ability to cache to a file and to normalize file paths for more efficient seeking of files. He also focuses on partial caching with a specific example of caching user data for use through out the application. A bit of code and some screenshots are included to show the performance boost this can give.