mysql - Multithreading/Parallel Processing in PHP

Question

I have a PHP script that will generate a report using PHPExcel from data queried from a MySQL DB. Currently, it is linear in processing in that it gets the data back from MySQL, reads in the Excel template, writes the data to the template, then outputs it. I have optimized the code to the point that the data is only iterated over once, and there is very little processing done on the PHP side. The query returns hundreds of lines in less than .001 seconds, so it is running fast enough. After some timing I have found my bottlenecks to be (surprise, surprise) reading the template and writing the output. I would like to do this:

Spawn a thread/process to read the template
Spawn a thread/process to fetch the data
Return back to parent thread - Parent thread will wait until both are complete
Proceed on as normal

My main questions are is this possible, is it worth it? If yes to both, how would you tackle it? Also, it is PHP 5 on CentOS

Answer 1

It is generally not a good idea to fork an Apache process. That can cause undetermined results. Instead, using some kind of queuing mechanism is preferable. Gearman is an open source queuing mechanism you can use. I also have a blog post on the Zend Server Job Queue that talks about running tasks asynchronously Do you queue? Introduction to the Zend Server Job Queue.

You could also use something like the Zend Framework Queuing classes to implement some of the asynchronous work. Zend_Queue

@Swisstack, also I will disagree with your assertion that PHP is not created for high performance. Very seldom are language features the cause of slow performance. Perhaps by doing a raw language test comparing $a++ among different languages you will see that, but that type of testing is irrelevant. I've done consulting on PHP for several years and I have never seen a performance problem that was due to the language.