The ionCube PHP Accelerator: Timings

	Timings
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How do the timings work?
The scripts times are calculated by using the getmicrotime() function, noting the time in microseconds at the start and end of each script, and displaying the difference. The scripts are actually the same for the accelerated and non-accelerated tests. The script directory has a symbolic link to itself called nocache, and the Apache virtual host section for the site then disables phpa for scripts that are within the nocache location, e.g.
<Location /nocache> php_value phpa off </Location>
The code that renders the page footer looks at the global variable $_PHPA['ENABLED'], and if set to true, adds the PHPA logo. This variable was introduced in PHPA 1.2p4, and previously the footer code examined the script URL and added the logo if the script wasn't accessed via the nocache path. You can see the variable output below, and notice that the ENABLED element changes if you select the non-accelerated page. The display uses var_dump().
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Why is an accelerated page sometimes slow?
Usually it won't be, but if Apache has just been restarted then there is a performance hit when the page is first accessed, and while the compiled code is optimised by PHPA and then cached. Other reasons may be because the server is particularly busy when the page was requested.
This server is also using its idle time to process files for SETI@home, and this may affect initial times after any period of no page requests.