From: domingo@... (Domingo Alvarez Duarte)
Date: 2002-04-03T10:34:31+09:00
Subject: Cutting 120 ms in mod_ruby,postgresql on an AMD500

Testing where the time is consumed when using mod_ruby,postgresql I
detected the folowing bottlenecks on an AMD 500MHZ.

Postgresql connection on each request 60ms.
CGI instantiation 60 ms.
processing the page template 60 ms.

The postgresql connection was fixed adding:

  RubyAddPath '/home/mingo/apache/dadlib'
  RubyRequire '/home/mingo/apache/dadlib/localsettings'

to the httpd.conf in the mod_ruby section:

require 'postgres'
module Apache
    class RubyRun
        @@pg_conn_handler = nil

        def RubyRun.pg_conn
            if !@@pg_conn_handler
                @@pg_conn_handler = PGconn.connect(nil, #pghost
                    nil, #pgport
                    nil, #pgoptions
                    nil, #pgtty
                    MAIN_DB      #database
                    )
            end
            @@pg_conn_handler
        end
    end
end

the above in the localsettings.rb file to add a class variable to
Apache::RubyRun to hold the postgresql connection handler and
referencing that field when a PGconn handler is needed.

In CGI.rb comment the following in the Cookie class declaration:

  class Cookie #< SimpleDelegator

      #super(@value)   #60 ms was consumed here

If you use CGI::session like me change the following line in
cgi/session.rb:

      unless id
        id, = request[session_key]
        unless id
          #id, = request.cookies[session_key]  #original line
          id = request.cookies[session_key].value[0] #modified line
        end

And test your pages to see how fast they are now.

I use the following to see how long my pages take, at the top of the
template:

$start_t = Time.now

And at the bottom of the template:

cgi.out() { processed_template + "<!-- #{(Time.now.to_f -
$start_t}-->}

The time consume in the Cookies initialization is mainly in de
Delegation class, probably is a good idea to implement it in a
different way because the penaulty in the time consumed to proccess a
template is so huge.

With the modifications above my application seems to run fine but
consuming less than half the time consumed before.

Well folks that is it, I hope it can help someone.