PHP performance 101: so you need to use a database

The talk I gave at PHP World in Washington, DC. In this talk I presented the most common database-related performance bottlenecks that can happen in most PHP applications.

Being involved in performance audits on systems of every size, from start-up sites hacked together overnight, to a ginormous applications built by world-recognized brand companies, I’ve seen a lot of interesting (and sometimes very unique) performance issues in every level of the stack: code, architecture, databases (sometimes all of the above). But there are a few particular, very “Performance 101″, issues that (unfortunately) appear in a lot of code bases.