If you are using PHP, chances are that at some point you needed to serialize PHP data, whether it was transparently done for you inside the PHP's session handler or directly so that complex PHP data types (objects & arrays) could be stored in DB or files, most people have done this.
The default way of doing it is via a native PHP serializer, which creates a clear-text version of the data, which if you are serializing a fair bit of information ends up being rather verbose (read: BIG). This means that you end up having to store more data in memory, read more data from disk, etc... all of which slow down your application. As I was reading docs on
Andrei's new memcache extension (
memcached) I came across a binary serialization extension called
Igbinary written by Sulake Dynamoid Oy. This extension promised much more optimal serialization routines by using binary, rather then a clear text format. Sounded, good so I decided to run a few benchmarks on it.
Continue reading "Igbinary, The great serializer"
