Question

I have a postgresql database which contains multidimensional data. What I did was I wrote a data structure that sorts all database rows into a tree format. Now the database is large and so I dont want to generate the tree every time a request comes in from a browser. What Id like to do is construct the tree once in a certain time period and persist it in memory on the server.

The tree is read only by the way. So now each time a request comes in the tree need not be generated new, its already there.

How can I make this happen. Im not an expert programmer, just a beginner and definitely new to web programming. So some of these concepts are new to me.

But if you could please point me in the right direction in terms of the concepts involved here, I can google the rest.

Or if you have actual links or examples that would be fantastic.

Thanks

Answer 1

There are several ways to approach this problem. It depends on just how close to the application you want the variables. If you’re really looking to have them right “on top” of the application, for fastest possible use, then you could look at using a global variable “$tree” and hooking in to the application flow. Other options might include memcached, which is still pretty darn close to the application. Redis would be a good option for an in-memory database that could be shared between instances of an application, as it is a NoSQL database that you query. Not quite as close to the application though.

Generally, those are your primary options. In-application variables that survive requests. Application frameworks that will help variables survive requests and provide you a querying mechanism. Or, an In-Memory databases that will allow you to store and query rapidly from multiple instances. Each is a viable option, though I’m pretty sure you’d get a lot of ‘community’ flack for using a straight up global variable (such practices are considered unclean for their lack of thread-safety and other such concerns).