Damien Seguy has continued his series looking at PHP configurations around the web and is sharing the results in the form of two new reports over on Nexen.net.

I just published the second part of the serie about PHP configurations. This part focuses on three aspects of PHP: PHP extensions, PHP streams, and disabled functions.

You can find the statistics themselves here and the latest configuration statistics here. It's interesting to see the drop-off when it comes to the various modules that are installed ("php, ftp and http are the most common. Besides them, tough luck.") and to see the somewhat more gradual curve of which functions are disabled - with system() topping out the list (with good reason).

Damien Seguy has continued his series looking at PHP configurations around the web and is sharing the results in the form of two new reports over on Nexen.net.

I just published the second part of the serie about PHP configurations. This part focuses on three aspects of PHP: PHP extensions, PHP streams, and disabled functions.

You can find the statistics themselves here and the latest configuration statistics here. It's interesting to see the drop-off when it comes to the various modules that are installed ("php, ftp and http are the most common. Besides them, tough luck.") and to see the somewhat more gradual curve of which functions are disabled - with system() topping out the list (with good reason).

The MySQL Performance Blog takes a look today at a more PHP-related topic - persistent connections in PHP and whether or not they are the devil (well, okay, so maybe not quest that bad - just a little evil).

The reason behind using persistent connections is of course reducing number of connects which are rather expensive, even though they are much faster with MySQL than with most other databases.

They go on to talk about:

• issues with the number of active connections that could come up
• the use of too many connections at once
• why persistent connections are disabled in the new mysqli extension

Their conclusion? Persistent connections are not evil. In fact, they're very good, when used in the right context and for the right kinds of queries. There's also a small push for an even newer MySQL driver for PHP by the MySQL team - the "mysqlnd" driver.

The MySQL Performance Blog takes a look today at a more PHP-related topic - persistent connections in PHP and whether or not they are the devil (well, okay, so maybe not quest that bad - just a little evil).

The reason behind using persistent connections is of course reducing number of connects which are rather expensive, even though they are much faster with MySQL than with most other databases.

They go on to talk about:

• issues with the number of active connections that could come up
• the use of too many connections at once
• why persistent connections are disabled in the new mysqli extension

Their conclusion? Persistent connections are not evil. In fact, they're very good, when used in the right context and for the right kinds of queries. There's also a small push for an even newer MySQL driver for PHP by the MySQL team - the "mysqlnd" driver.