Looking for a safe and efficient way to "carry" data from page to page

[Tekton]

In general, I thought that filereads were faster, right?

[Brad]

Originally Posted by amykhar

Efficiency question: What would use more server resources - doing a query for each question, or doing a file read for each question? In general, are file reads more intensive than querying the database?

Amy

It depends on what sort of table you query. If the data is temp store it in memory and destory it once you are finished with it (or put it on the hard disk).

Reading from memory will be quicker then any sort of read on the HDD

[Dean C]

Amy I think you're worrying too much about the query-side of things. Whilst as programmers we strive to make our sites as efficient as possible simple select queries even with joins, aren't that resource intensive. You can optimize them further by adding indexes as well. Anyways, database retrieval is far faster than retrieving from a file

[Xenon]

DB systems are more optimized that file searches, so i'd always use DB instead of files.

but of course, depending on your loadbalance, a file can sometimes be more usefull

[amykhar]

Thanks, Dean

I'm really working right now on improving the efficiency and security of my php coding. I'm trying to learn as much as possible to make some bigger things I'm working on better.