This has been a rather random few days.
- I bought a steam-boat (not really; but close enough.)
- I fell in love with mod_perl
For those of you that don't know it mod_perl is an Apache module which embeds perl into your webserver.
You can use this to write extensions, handlers, and all kinds of fun things in pure perl.
Me? I just changed the beefy CGI script that I use to power a couple of my sites from being plain-CGI to being mod_perl-CGI - that means:
- The same perl engine & copy of my script stays in memory.
- I don't need the fork()/exec() overhead for each incoming rquest.
The downside is that I have to "/etc/init.d/apache2 reload" if I change my script, or any of my custom modules it uses. (I suspect this is something I can fix; I just don't know how yet :)
All that was possible, with zero changes to my applications as I use the CGI::Application framework - lucky? or planned? I'll let you decide ...
In terms of speedup I can now process about 100 requests a second, compared to 10. As reported by the Apache-benchmark tool. Cool.
ObFilm: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
