I have never written an application using persistent connections, but
I did get hired at a company where the other programmers describe the
same problem you're having (a proliferation of connections that
overwhelmed the server). They blamed mysql_pconnect() and the lead
programmer said that after he banned the use of that function, the
problem went away completely. A comment to the PHP documentation
suggests this is the result of a bad interaction between Apache and
PHP.
Not really true.
pconnect leaves the connection open ('persistent'). From the manual:
"when connecting, the function would first try to find a (persistent)
link that's already open with the same host, username and password."
If you're on a shared host with lots of different mysql
username/passwords floating around, pconnect will be a very bad idea -
because you'll end up with lots of connections sitting around doing
nothing (and never being re-used).
If you're on dedicated hardware, pconnect can cut down the connection
time - but when using them, you need to tune apache as well.
There's lots of notes here:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.persistent-connections.php
--
Postgresql & php tutorials
http://www.designmagick.com/
--
PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
