Now there is a cache object (atkCache) available in the ATK SVN trunk. The new atkCache class is a factory class, which builds and returns instances of atkCache which has all the methods to communicate with an external cache to handle the actual storage and retrieval.

It supports lots of different backend caching methods - APC, eAccelerator, the Zend Platform functionality, memcache, xcache and both file and variable caching.

He includes an example of its use - creating an object to cache to a file, configuring it with options like lifetime and path, and an example of its use (to cache a theme for a web page).

Welcome to the first edition of the PHP performance series, a new series that I will be explaining ways to gain efficiencies and squeezing more performance out of your applications. This first edition, caching techniques, focuses on ways to cache data to optimize your current sites. Some of the concepts here are fairly easy to implement while others may take strategic design in the architecture of your application.

The methods he looks at this time are:

• Opcode Caching
• File Priming
• Caching Variables
• File Caching
• Memory Caching
• Database Memory Tables
• RAM Disk