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Windows Cache Extension for PHP is here

Microsoft has released a Beta of a new PHP accelerator named Windows Cache Extension for PHP. It's a pretty cool thing for anybody who deals with a lot of PHP applications on Windows because the way I see it and Microsoft explains is the same. We can now have even better performance from PHP applications! How?

Basically, as the name suggests Windows Cache Extension is a caching technique which results in better performance results, as not every request asking for the same resource needs to go to the source in order to fetch it.

Before we get into the details... here's how you get it ... But even before that lets go over some requirements:

The extension is supported only on the following configurations:

Windows OS:

  • Windows XP SP3 with IIS 5.1 and FastCGI Extension
  • Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.0 and FastCGI Extension
  • Windows Vista SP1 with IIS 7.0 and FastCGI Module
  • Windows Server 2008 with IIS 7.0 and FastCGI Module
  • Windows 7 with IIS 7 and FastCGI Module
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 with IIS 7.0 and FastCGI Module

PHP:

  • PHP 5.2.X, Non-thread-safe build
  • PHP 5.3 X86, Non-thread-safe VC9 build

IMPORTANT: The Windows Cache Extension can only be used when IIS is configured to run PHP via FastCGI.

To download the correct extension choose from the below:

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.2 - Beta

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 – Beta

Installation of the the extension is not different from the installation of any other PHP extension.
  • Get hold of the dll
  • Put it in the \ext directory of php
  • Modify the php.ini ... (in this case extension = php_wincache.dll )
  • Refresh the app pools using php and DONE!
Once that is done you should be seeing something like the below:













Windows cache extension for PHP has 3 caching techniques namely:
  1. PHP Opcode Cache
  2. File Cache
  3. Relative File Path Cache
It would take time and a repetitive action to explain then here... So you can get more information and explanation on these can be found here and here.

Have Fun!

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