John Lim follows up with a SitePoint forum posting concerning persistence in PHP.

Lastcraft brings up a good point about persistence in PHP in this SitePoint forum post:

The java people write a lot of the enterprise patterns books. That's OK, because most of these patterns work fine regardless. However one difference is in how much gets loaded on each request. For example in Java it's worth loading a big chunk of the database because it will still be useful on furture requests. We win by cutting down database traffic. With a Java persistence layer, you feel as if you are working with a real object that happens to have the common sense to save itself to the database every now and again. It really does feel like a "persistent object".

In PHP that is a difficult illusion to sustain.

The posting continues with Lastcraft talking with a metaphor about the possibilities of persistence in PHP. John, however, suggests another alternative - client-side persistence via a combination of PHP and Javascript.

So in my opinion, we're all looking on the wrong side of the mirror. As gmail and oddpost have shown us, the rich client is making a comeback. Better be ready...