All about Php & Mysql  optimization / benchmark

You can make detailed readings of the server logs.  Look out for things like missing files that might cause repeated 404. APC and MemcacheD are popular.
http://us.php.net/manual/en/book.apc.php
http://us.php.net/manual/en/book.memcached.php

Sphinx and Lucene seem to be mostly about searching.  I do not consider them to be optimization techniques.


In MySQL, EXPLAIN SELECT is a popular technique.

This article (a little old) and others like it are easily found if you search for PHP performance.
http://talks.php.net/show/perf_tunning/

I have written a stopwatch class that enables me to time part of a script.  The class and a demonstration use case are in the code snippet.  For more comprehensive diagnosis, you might consider profiling with XDebug
http://www.xdebug.org/docs/profiler

This might also be interesting:
http://about.digg.com/blog/rasmus-lerdorf-php-performance

The links on this page offer some good ideas:
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/phpbench-live-php-benchmarks-best-practices/

Overall, the problem with hypothetical performance optimization is that you don't really know what the workload looks like until you have the workload or can simulate the workload.  Only then can you see how the system under test responds.  And only in observing the response to the workload you will be able to see "what comes next" in the broad panoply of potential monitoring and optimizing tools.

HTH, ~Ray

<?php // RAY_oop_stopwatch.php
error_reporting(E_ALL);


// DEMONSTRATE A SCRIPT TIMER FOR ALL OR PART OF A SCRIPT PHP 5+
// MAN PAGE http://php.net/manual/en/function.microtime.php


class StopWatch
{
    protected $a, $z;
    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->a = array();
        $this->z = array();
    }

    // A METHOD TO CAPTURE A START TIME
    public function start($name='TIMER')
    {
        $this->a[$name] = microtime(TRUE);
    }

    // A METHOD TO CAPTURE AN END TIME
    public function stop($name='ALL')
    {
        if ($name == 'ALL')
        {
            foreach ($this->a as $name => $start_time)
            {
                if (!isset($this->z[$name])) $this->z[$name] = microtime(TRUE);
            }
        }
        else
        {
            $this->z[$name] = microtime(TRUE);
        }
    }

    // A METHOD TO READ OUT THE TIMER(S)
    public function readout($m=1000, $eol=PHP_EOL)
    {
        $str = NULL;
        foreach ($this->a as $name => $start_time)
        {
            $str .= $name;
            if (!isset($this->z[$name]))
            {
                $str .= " IS STILL RUNNING";
            }
            else
            {
                $lapse_time = $this->z[$name] - $start_time;
                $lapse_msec = $lapse_time * $m;
                $lapse_echo = number_format($lapse_msec, 1);
                $str .= " $lapse_echo";
            }
            $str .= $eol;
        }
        return $str;
    }
}


// DEMONSTRATE THE USE -- INSTANTIATE THE STOPWATCH OBJECT
$sw  = new Stopwatch;

// SET STOPWATCH NAMES
$go = 'GOOGLE ONLY';
$gy = 'GOOGLE AND YAHOO!';
$yo = 'YAHOO! ONLY';

// START SOME TIMERS
$sw->start($go);
$sw->start($gy);

// PERFORM SOME ACTIVITY THAT YOU WANT TO TIME
$page = 'http://google.com';
$html = file_get_contents($page);

// STOP ONE OF THE STOPWATCHES AND START THE OTHER
$sw->stop($go);
$sw->start($yo);

// PERFORM SOME OTHER ACTIVITY THAT YOU WANT TO TIME
$page = 'http://yahoo.com';
$html = file_get_contents($page);

// REPORT THE STOPWATCHES CONTENT (TWO WILL BE INCOMPLETE)
echo nl2br($sw->readout());

// STOP ALL OF THE REMAINING STOPWATCHES
$sw->stop();

// REPORT THE STOPWATCHES CONTENT AGAIN
echo nl2br($sw->readout());

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