Or: Why doesn't PHP have Applications variables like ASP.NET (and node.js) ? Hi, I'm working on optimising a php application (Drupal). The best optimisation I've found so far is to use APC to store various bits of Drupal data in RAM. The problem with this is that with Drupal requiring say 50Mb of data* per request is that lots of cpu cycles are wasted de-serialising data out of apc_fetch. Also 50Mb of data per http process !! is wasted by each one re-creating it's own copy of the shared data. If it were possible for apc_fetch (or similar function) to return a pointer to the data rather than a copy of the data this would enable incredible reduction in cpu and memory usage. This is essentially how ASP.NET Application variables and node.js work. I'm surprised PHP doesn't already have Application variables, given that they are so similar to Session Variables and that it's been around for a long time in ASP / ASP.NET. I just wondered if there was a reason for not having this functionality or if it's on a road map somewhere or I've missed something :) ?
