use Perl

• Memoize (Score:1)

  by runrig (3385)

  > With, at present, 387 people in the database, that's 1935 objects that I need to instantiate...

  I hope you're not fetching every bit of data from the database 387 times. You should only have to fetch each unique thing once using something like the Memoize module or some homegrown version of it. If you don't have 387 global regions, then you shouldn't have 387 instances of them.
  • Re:Memoize (Score:2)

    by Ovid (2709)

    I'm not using Memoize. Instead, I check the id and classname and if I already have an instance of an object, I fetch it from a cache. Because it's only a reference in the cache, all instances of the object are simultaneously updated (if more than one) and I don't typically need to worry about database synchronization issues.

    In other words, my initial explanation was a bit simplistic, but it seemed easier that way :)
    • Re:Memoize (Score:1)

      by dws (341) on 2002.12.06 15:45 (#15239) Homepage Journal

      Most people use a "if it's not in the cache, fetch it" strategy. An alternative is to fetch the data, and only add it to the cache if it's not already there. This sounds counterintuitive, but can be a win if can fetch data for the complete traversal of objects in one query. That is, instead of having the Person class do a query to get a person by id, have a helper class use a JOIN query to get the person data (by id), along with the company data, along with whatever else, in one big row. Then pick the row apart, adding the objects to the cache if necessary.

      Databases are good enough at doing joins that you might find that doing all-at-once JOIN queries are faster than going after the parts individually, even if you're using a cache to avoid having to do some of the queries.

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      • Re:Memoize (Score:1)

        by chromatic (983)

        Yes, this is what I was trying to say. Just say no to editing things for gnat [perl.org], kids!