PHP Everywhere: The Ultimate PHP for Windows with Turck MMCache (and FastCGI)

The old problem with running PHP on Windows is that many extensions are not thread safe and can only run safely in CGI mode. Unfortunately CGI is dead slow because the web server creates a new CGI process for each page request.

FastCGI is the solution to this. Instead of creating a new CGI process for each page view, it reuses existing CGI processes. This also improves database scalability because persistent db connections work properly.

...Well there is a lesser known GPL'ed accelerator, Turck MMCache that supports both Windows, Unix and Linux, written by Dmitry Stogov. I tested MMCache and FastCGI against several PHP scripts accessing MySQL, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. I gave the web-server a good pounding with a 60 minute stress test using fiendish scripts that cause PHP in ISAPI mode to crash. MMCache appears to be made of sterner stuff and passed with flying colours. While the test was running, I modified the source code of the test scripts; MMCache auto-detected the changes and recompiled.

[via PHP Everywhere]