[wp-hackers] Caching in 2.5: anyone has a file-based caching plugin?

[Mahmoud Al-Qudsi]

> There are several levels to start with - caching whole pages, a la
> movable type - but dealing with frequent cache invalidation (who said
> this was the most difficult problem in computer science?). Lower level
> caching - of the post object, comment objects, etc - should be worth
> it too. It might not enable any old shared host to survive a full-
> scale digg+slashdot attack, but might let one hold up a smaller rush
> of traffic.
> 
> Is db caching worth it? Is there any demand for it? Does it exist
> already, in some ready form?


Robert Marsh replied to the Object Caching article on my blog that he's created a database-cache extension and in his case it has helped performance. I'll cut and paste my reply:

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I assume you're simply storing key-value relationships in a (temporary?) MySQL table; thus turning into more-or-less a dictionary? Temporary tables would probably perform quite-decently given that they're stored and kept in the memory, verses normal tables which have portions cached in the memory but reside on-disk......

Now that I think about it though, it actually does make sense. After all, you're getting memory-based (even if only partially) storage for commonly-accessed values; retrieving them with some highly-optimized compiled-C code (the MySQL engine). [compared with accessing files off the disk each and every time with the usual WP file-based caching scenario.
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He says he'll be releasing it soon. If I don't hear back from him, I'll take it on as another caching project to add to the family, if y'all like.

-MQ