# High performance queries - RoR, PHP or something else? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [December 30, 2005, 2:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/high-performance-queries-ror-php-or-something-else/51377 "2005-12-30T14:46:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Carl-Johan_K)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 2:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/high-performance-queries-ror-php-or-something-else/51377/1 "2005-12-30T14:46:48Z")
Hi everyone, I’m building an app in RoR that apart from the normal web interface has a web service. This web service takes a parameter and uses that in a single database query, and returns the result in a simple XML format. This web service needs to be quite fast as it will be used on all pages of a quite big site with thousands of visitors every hour. I don’t think caching is an option since most of the the requests will have different parameters. I’m wondering if it makes sense to do the web service in something other than Rails. I did a quick comparison between RoR and PHP on the same server: Ruby on Rails Concurrency Level: 100 Time taken for tests: 143.176 seconds Complete requests: 10000 Failed requests: 0 Broken pipe errors: 0 Total transferred: 5534371 bytes HTML transferred: 3340334 bytes Requests per second: 69.84 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 1431.76 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 14.32 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 38.65 [Kbytes/sec] received PHP Concurrency Level: 100 Time taken for tests: 47.542 seconds Complete requests: 10000 Failed requests: 0 Broken pipe errors: 0 Total transferred: 5410000 bytes HTML transferred: 3710000 bytes Requests per second: 210.34 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 475.42 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 4.75 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 113.79 [Kbytes/sec] received As you can see, in this particular case PHP is 3x faster than RoR. What do you do when you have a specific part of your app that has high performance requirements? Best regards, CJ Kihlbom ---
**Author:** ![Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Carl-Johan_K)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 3:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/high-performance-queries-ror-php-or-something-else/51377/2 "2005-12-30T15:02:20Z")
Hi ! 2005/12/30, Carl-Johan K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): > What do you do when you have a specific part of your app that has high > performance requirements? You do the simplest thing that could possibly work. If in this particular instance PHP is better for you, and you don’t mind the duplication of logic between Rails and PHP, then yes, PHP is a good fit for you. If on the other hand you need something simpler to maintain than hard performance requirements, then you just throw more hardware at the problem, until it goes away. Also, you should tell us how you configured Rails, because there might be some tweaks that would bring your runtime lower - closer to PHP’s. Hope that helps ! ---
**Author:** ![Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Carl-Johan_K)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 3:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/high-performance-queries-ror-php-or-something-else/51377/3 "2005-12-30T15:06:12Z")
Carl-Johan K. wrote: > This web service needs to be quite fast as it will be used on all > pages of a quite big site with thousands of visitors every hour. I > don’t think caching is an option since most of the the requests will > have different parameters. I wouldn’t start optimizing based on assumptions. _Calculate_ how many req/s you need, and compare to how many you can manage. And don’t write off caching, even if there are many different queries caching can be effective when the database does not change often. > I’m wondering if it makes sense to do the web service in something > other than Rails. I did a quick comparison between RoR and PHP on the > same server: These results depend heavily on the configuration, like the number of FastCGI processes and the session handler (disabling sessions can improve performance a lot). ---
**Author:** ![Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Carl-Johan_K)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 4:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/high-performance-queries-ror-php-or-something-else/51377/4 "2005-12-30T16:27:58Z")
Have you profiled these tests on the server(s) to see a) Where in the stack they are spending their time (Ruby or PHP, database, web server, OS) b) Where the hardware bottleneck is (processor, disk, network)? There is no point in throwing hardware at a problem until you know what kind of hardware and why. At first glance, I am assuming that all other things (database, web server and OS) are equal and the difference is all either in the Rails code or the underlying Ruby interpreter. If the Rails code is inefficient for this test case, I’m sure the Rails team (and this list) would be more than willing to help out. Carl-Johan K. wrote: > have different parameters. > Failed requests: 0 > Concurrency Level: 100 > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails) – M. Edward (Ed) Borasky > **[世界杯竞猜彩票-世界杯官网竞猜（集团）有限公司](http://www.linuxcapacityplanning.com/)** > > 世界杯竞猜彩票一直以来遵守商业道德，世界杯官网竞猜坚持诚信为本，保证诚实经营。世界杯竞猜彩票先后成为安徽省电子商务协会理事单位、安徽省网商协会会员单位、合肥市电子商务协会理事单位、合肥市服务外包行业协会会员单位、安徽省云计算产业促进会会员单位。世界杯官网竞猜一直保持良好的技术及服务态度，更好地为客户服务。 ---
**Author:** ![Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Carl-Johan\_K](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Carl-Johan_K)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/high-performance-queries-ror-php-or-something-else/51377/5 "2005-12-30T18:22:14Z")
On Friday 30 December 2005 14:43, Carl-Johan K. wrote: > I’m building an app in RoR that apart from the normal web interface > has a web service. This web service takes a parameter and uses that > in a single database query, and returns the result in a simple XML > format. What does that query look like? How many objects does it return? Does it eagerly include associations? When the query returns more than, say, 1000 rows, instantiating the ActiveRecord objects for these may be the bottleneck. To be sure, you have to measure the execution times of the various stages in your setup. If you find that database access indeed is the bottleneck, measure the plain SQL query to find out how fast it could be in the limit. Then, decide whether it is worthwhile to bypass the object instantiation of ActiveRecord. Michael – Michael S. Those people who smile a lot [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) Watch the eyes [Michael Schürig | Sentenced to making sense](http://www.schuerig.de/michael/) --Ani DiFranco, Outta Me, Onto You