At 03:08 PM 5/26/00 -0400, Richard Dice wrote:
>Hello there...
>
>I was wondering, with the new Pg-specific support you've got going with
>Apache::Session, does it handle Pg blobs transparently?
>
>The regular limit on the size of a tuple in Pg is 8k, which can be a
>problem if I'm trying to put more than that into my Apache::Session
>tied hash. (Yes, I do that sometimes. It's a handy place to hide
>stuff, those sessions...)
Well, they are handy at that. But on the other hand, I tend to question the
use of storing a LOT of data in sessions.
At the point that the data reaches a critical mass, then it is likely that
the data is getting more crucial to the application. If the data is crucial
to the application, that also tends to mean that it would be best served
(ultimately) by having an appropriate data structure where the session ID
happens to be a key.
eg I may make a file based session for just storing sundry things, but I
would rarely want to store a shopping cart for a web store inside a
session. A shopping cart is a data structure that has potential links to
other information such as inventory tables. Now, the cart should be tied to
the session id anyway, but whether the data should be stored as one big
blob is another issue.
Another thing about huge sessions is that depending on your locking and
concurrency considerations, one big blob can become suboptimal for
performance if you are not careful.
Anyway, I guess this is just a philosophical issue with me. I know others
like to store everything in their sessions. :)
Later,
Gunther
__________________________________________________
Gunther Birznieks ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Extropia - The Web Technology Company
http://www.extropia.com/
