A modest but powerful utility “stole the show” during last week’s Lunch & Learn with Alan Seiden and Paul Tuohy. Packaged with CommunityPlus+ PHP, Seiden Group’s siteadd creates an Apache HTTP instance and a FastCGI configuration customized for your needs. In seconds, you’ll be able to launch a sample PHP page to test your new web instance.
When your site gets busy, your web server may need a configuration change to handle the load. We often start with the Apache web server’s ThreadsPerChild directive.
ThreadsPerChild controls how many connections can exist at once. Defaulting to 40, its value can be set in your Apache instance configuration file (for example, /www/zendphp7/httpd.conf):
Starting January 27, 2015, I’ll be giving three free Tuesday webinars:
All three one-hour webinars will be held at 14:00 Central European Time (CET). That’s 8 AM Eastern Standard Time (EST). The registration page includes a time zone converter.
Details and to register: http://www.data3.se/?p=5287
Thanks to Torbjörn Appehl of Data3 (COMMON Sweden) for organizing these.
Join me for two events this week sponsored by COMMON, a Users Group:
Details on online workshop: http://www.common.org/index.php/webinars.html
Update: a recording of this class is available at http://iprodeveloper.com/let-your-php-apps-fly-ibm-i-high-performance-php-demand
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This Tuesday, learn how to Let Your PHP applications fly on IBM i. Busy? You can attend while getting your work done, with three one-hour class segments separated by breaks.
“Our process now runs 30-50% faster, thanks to one tip from Alan’s presentation.”
—Mike Meszaros, Software Developer, Specialty Pipe & Tube
You’ll learn to quickly improve your application’s performance, including:
I’ll be there to answer your questions. What’s more, the presentation will be archived for 60 days so you can review the material afterward.
“Alan is the performance guru of PHP on IBM i. When we encountered unexpectedly slow queries and program calls, Alan showed us a configuration change that helped our application run 3x faster, creating happy users. Thanks, Alan!”
—Adam Chuk Shirley, PHP Developer, Sabel Steel Service
What: PHP on IBM i performance eLearning event
When: Tuesday, December 10, 2013: three one-hour segments with two one-hour breaks, starting 11AM and ending 4PM (ET).
Where: Online
Cost: $150 (but discounted to $99 through Friday, Dec. 6)
Details and registration: http://iprodeveloper.com/let-your-php-apps-fly-ibm-i-high-performance-php
For the first time, I’m teaching how to Let Your PHP applications fly on IBM i, including how to configure Zend Server for performance, diagnose bottlenecks, leverage unique IBM i performance tools, optimize DB2 and the IBM i toolkit, and improve performance of front-end javascript, style sheets, and the like. You’ll come away with knowledge that you can use immediately to improve your application’s performance.
I’ll be there to answer your questions. What’s more, the presentation will be archived for 60 days so you can review the material afterward.
What: PHP on IBM i performance eLearning event
When: Tuesday, July 30, 2013: three one-hour segments with two one-hour breaks, starting 11AM and ending 4PM (ET).
Where: Online
Cost: $150 (group registrations available)
Details and registration: http://iprodeveloper.com/let-your-php-apps-fly-ibm-i-high-performance-php
Questions: Get in touch with Alan
August 22, 2013: At NESTU (user group in Fairfield, N.J.): “At ease! Relax your neck-back-shoulders at the keyboard”: A special presentation from Alan to help computer workers (such as all of us) avoid repetitive strain injury and stay poised at work. Fun and unusual.
September 9-11, 2013: COMMON Fall 2013 Conference and Expo in St. Louis, Missouri. The Premier IBM i event. I’m presenting 5 talks on PHP and web performance.
October 7, 2013: Full-day, in-depth PHP on IBM i Performance Workshop, 9:30-4PM (PT) at ZendCon (the PHP conference). Register for both parts of this tutorial (room 6) for Oct. 7, and the full conference, which goes till Oct. 10, in Santa Clara, California. I’m presenting several talks on PHP for IBM i in addition to the full-day performance tutorial.
Alan’s event page: https://www.seidengroup.com/presentations/upcoming/
Tomorrow I’m presenting a new webcast, New PHP Toolkit from Zend and IBM: Open Source on IBM i, as part of System i Network’s free “Virtual Conference.”
Date: Thursday, April 5
Time: 11:15am ET
Registration (free): http://tinyurl.com/new-toolkit-20120405
Other presentations in the virtual conference include Jon Paris explaining why PHP is an excellent strategic choice on IBM i, two talks on mobile technology, and more.
I invite you to watch the webcast, ask questions, and learn more about the new toolkit.
Hope you can join me for “Web performance first aid,” a webcast for the COMMON user group. The webcast will be recorded and archived for future listenings as well.
The webcast is for COMMON members, so anyone wanting to hear it needs to join COMMON.
I based the presentation on my consulting practice that helps ensure high performance for PHP and Zend Framework applications on IBM i. Good performance is critical for customer acceptance of web sites and mobile applications.
Webcast link: http://www.common.org/index.php/webcasts/upcoming-webcasts.html
Anyone wishing to see just the slides can do that on my site: http://alanseiden.com/presentations and look for “Web performance first aid.”
Does your site run as quickly as it could? It’s worth your time to find out. Faster web sites sell more products, improve user satisfaction, and even rank higher in Google searches.
Note: This tip was written for IBM i but could be adapted for other platforms as well.
Compression adds speed
IBM’s Apache web server provides a way to speed up your pages. You can compress PHP output, javascript, style sheets, and other text-based content. The compressed output will automatically be decompressed and interpreted properly by all modern web browsers. My tests show a speed improvement of 10-50% from this easy technique.
How to enable compression in 3 steps
1. Edit your Apache configuration file, located at /www/myserver/conf/httpd.conf (replace myserver with your instance name. This is a simple text file, so you may choose from several editors: IBM’s HTTP Server Admin GUI at port 2001 (if *ADMIN is started), the WRKLNK/EDTF command, or your favorite text editor.
2. Add the following two directives to the httpd.conf’s main section:
# Load IBM i's module that performs compression LoadModule deflate_module /QSYS.LIB/QHTTPSVR.LIB/QZSRCORE.SRVPGM # Specify what to compress (example: php, json, css, javascript, static html) AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-php application/json text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript text/html
3. Restart Apache via the HTTP Server Admin page or STRTCPSVR SERVER(*HTTP) RESTART(*HTTP) HTTPSVR(MYSERVER)
Measure the improvement
I ran before-and-after tests using a sample script included with Zend Server for IBM i: http://your-server:10088/Samples/SQL_access/DB2_SQL_example.php.
Before compression: 31kb, loaded in 250ms (milliseconds). See the Firebug report below (Firebug is an optional add-on for Firefox and is not required.)
Without compression, this page was 31kb and loaded in 250ms
After compression: 4.4kb; loaded in 109ms. That’s only 14% of the size and 50% of the time! See the screen shot below.
after compression: only 4.4kb and loaded in 109ms
I highly recommend that you give output compression a try. Your HTTP Server for IBM i pages will fly!
For more information on browser output compression, see: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.html
A reader recently asked me this security question:
If a user enters:
http://<my_ip>/<mydirectory>
instead of
http://<my_ip>/<mydirectory>/script.phpThey get a listing of all scripts/files in that directory and they can then select and execute/run those scripts.
This is a real concern for us, any suggestions?
The solution is to turn off directory browsing in your Apache configuration. To do this, make sure your Apache configuration file (probably httpd.conf or .htaccess) includes this directive:
Options -Indexes
Note that this directive merely prevents people from discovering the names of your files. Users who already know your file names can still access them. But Options -Indexes provides an important layer of security, preventing mischief from casual users who might otherwise stumble onto your file names by accident or design.
More information: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options