Andrew Arensburger wrote:
Currently, every script and module that requires configuration values has a snippet of code that reads /etc/koha.conf. This means that a particular operation might cause a script to read /etc/koha.conf several times. That can't be good for performance. In addition, since the snippet of code is nearly identical everywhere, it's just begging to be put into a separate function. To that end, I've written C4::Config module, which reads /etc/koha.conf (or a file of your choice, or the file pointed to by the $KOHA_CONF environment variable), and caches the results. If people think this is a Good Idea, just let me know where to send the code.
Along those same lines, a lot of functions use $dbh = C4Connect; to get a handle to the Koha database. The way C4Connect is implemented, it creates a new handle each time. So if 'search.pl' finds ten results, it'll open 14 connections to the database. This seems wasteful, especially if the web server and database server aren't the same machine.
I already saw and points this problem a few months ago, but due to lack of time... Note in the new MARC API, EVERY function is called with $dbh being 1st parameter... (if one is not : then it's a bug, or it doesn't use db access at all)
So if C4::Config is well received, I'll also fix C4Connect to cache the database handle and return the same one each time, if it can. Finally, a number of scripts need to know which branches or item types exist. But I'll venture that after the initial setup, neither of these changes more than once every few months. It seems rather silly to have a script query the database for these values, when they could be cached locally. Hence, it would make sense to save this information in a Perl module on the web server, so that scripts don't have to query the database each time. And run a cron job once an hour to regenerate this module from the information in the database. Thoughts? Is this sensible, or am I full of it?
I agree. And I can add another table : the "stopword", which is HEAVILY used when you add a marc record. Another idea : would it be possible to change $dbh to transform it in a "koha param object container" having : * the db handle * /etc/koha.conf parameters * some "static" tables the best would be to be still able to have $dbh->prepare or $dbh->do, but to add $dbh->param() to get koha parameter of $dbh->stopwords to get hash or array of stopwords... If we could, then we hadn't to modify all koha API. -- Paul