Chapter 15. Using MySQL with memcached

Table of Contents

15.1. Installing memcached
15.2. Using memcached
15.2.1. memcached Deployment
15.2.2. Memory allocation within memcached
15.2.3. Using namespaces
15.2.4. Data Expiry
15.2.5. memcached Hash Types
15.3. memcached Interfaces
15.3.1. Using libmemcached
15.3.2. Using MySQL and memcached with Perl
15.3.3. Using MySQL and memcached with Python
15.3.4. Using MySQL and memcached with PHP
15.3.5. Using MySQL and memcached with Ruby
15.3.6. Using MySQL and memcached with Java
15.3.7. Using the MySQL memcached UDFs
15.4. Getting memcached Statistics
15.4.1. memcached General Statistics
15.4.2. memcached Slabs Statistics
15.4.3. memcached Item Statistics
15.4.4. memcached Size Statistics
15.5. memcached FAQ

The largest problem with scalability within a typical environment is the speed with which you can access information. For frequently accessed information, using MySQL can be slow because each access of information requires execution of the SQL query and recovery of the information from the database. This also means that queries on tables that are locked or blocking may delay your query and reduce the speed of recovery of information.

memcached is a simple, yet highly-scalable key-based cache that stores data and objects wherever dedicated or spare RAM is available for very quick access by applications. To use, you run memcached on one or more hosts and then use the shared cache to store objects.Because each host's RAM is storing information, the access speed will be much faster than having to load the information from disk. This can provide a significant performance boost in retrieving data versus loading the data natively from a database. Also, because the cache is just a repository for information, you can use the cache to store any data, including complex structures that would normally require a significant amount of effort to create, but in a ready-to-use format, helping to reduce the load on your MySQL servers.

The typical usage environment is to modify your application so that information is read from the cache provided by memcached. If the information isn't in memcached, then the data is loaded from the MySQL database and written into the cache so that future requests for the same object benefit from the cached data.

For a typical deployment layout, see Figure 15.1, “memcached overview”.

Figure 15.1. memcached overview

memcached overview

In the example structure, any of the clients can contact one of the memcached servers to request a given key. Each client is configured to talk to all of the servers shown in the illustration. Within the client, when the request is made to store the information, the key used to reference the data is hashed and this hash is then used to select one of the memcached servers. The selection of the memcached server takes place on the client before the server is contacted, keeping the process lightweight.

The same algorithm is used again when a client requests the same key. The same key will generate the same hash, and the same memcached server will be selected as the source for the data. Using this method, the cached data is spread among all of the memcached servers, and the cached information is accessible from any client. The result is a distributed, memory-based, cache that can return information, particularly complex data and structures, much faster than natively reading the information from the database.

The data held within a memcached server is never stored on disk (only in RAM, which means there is no persistence of data), and the RAM cache is always populated from the backing store (a MySQL database). If a memcached server fails, the data can always be recovered from the MySQL database, albeit at a slower speed than loading the information from the cache.

15.1. Installing memcached

You can build and install memcached from the source code directly, or you can use an existing operating system package or installation.

To install memcached on a RedHat, Fedora or CentOS host, use yum:

root-shell> yum install memcached

To install memcached on a Debian or Ubuntu host, use apt-get:

root-shell> apt-get install memcached

To install memcached on a Gentoo host, use emerge:

root-shell> emerge install memcached

To install on OpenSolaris, use the pkg command to install the SUNWmemcached package:

root-shell> pkg install SUNWmemcached

You may also find memcached in the Coolstack project. For more details, see http://cooltools.sunsource.net/coolstack/.

On other Unix-based platforms, including Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and Mac OS X, and Linux distributions not mentioned already, you will need to install from source. For Linux, make sure you have a 2.6-based kernel, which includes the improved epoll interface. For all platforms, ensure that you have libevent 1.1 or higher installed. You can obtain libevent from libevent web page.

You can obtain the source for memcached from memcached website.

To build memcached, follow these steps:

  1. Extract the memcached source package:

    shell> gunzip -c memcached-1.2.5.tar.gz | tar xf - 
  2. Change to the memcached-1.2.5 directory:

    shell> cd memcached-1.2.5
  3. Run configure

    shell> ./configure

    Some additional options you may want to specify to configure:

    • If you want to specify a different installation directory, use the --prefix option:

      shell> ./configure --prefix=/opt

      The default is to use the /usr/local directory.

    • If you have installed libevent and configure cannot find the library, use the --with-libevent option to specify the location of the installed library.

    • To build a 64-bit version of memcached (which will allow you to use a single instance with a large RAM allocation), use --enable-64bit.

    • To enable multi-threading support in memcached, which will improve the response times on servers with a heavy load, use --enable-threads.

  4. Run make to build memcached:

    shell> make
  5. Run make install to install memcached:

    shell> make install

15.2. Using memcached

To start using memcached, you must start the memcached service on one or more servers. Running memcached sets up the server, allocates the memory and starts listening for connections from clients.

Note

You do not need to be privileged user (root) to run memcached unless you want to listen on one of the privileged TCP/IP ports (below 1024). You must, however, use a user that has not had their memory limits restricted using setrlimit or similar.

To start the server, run memcached as a non-privileged (i.e. non-root) user:

shell> memcached

If you start memcached as root, use the -u option to specify the user for executing memcached:

shell> memcached -u memcache

By default, memcached uses the following settings:

  • Memory allocation of 64MB

  • Listens for connections on all network interfaces, using port 11211.

  • Supports a maximum of 1024 simultaneous connections.

To increase the amount of memory allocated for the cache, use the -m option to specify the amount of RAM to be allocated (in megabytes). The more RAM you allocate, the more data you can store and therefore the more effective your cache will be.

Warning

Do not specify a memory allocation larger than your available RAM. If you specify too large a value, then some RAM allocated for memcached will be using swap space, and not physical RAM. This may lead to delays when storing and retrieving values, because data will be swapped to disk, instead of storing the data directly in RAM.

You can use the output of the vmstat command to get the free memory, as shown in free column:

shell> vmstat
kthr      memory            page            disk          faults      cpu
r b w   swap  free  re  mf pi po fr de sr s1 s2 -- --   in   sy   cs us sy id
0 0 0 5170504 3450392 2  7  2  0  0  0  4  0  0  0  0  296   54  199  0  0 100

For example, to allocate 3GB of RAM:

shell> memcached -m 3072

On 32-bit x86 systems where you are using PAE to access memory above the 4GB limit, you will be unable to allocate RAM beyond the maximum process size. You can get around this by running multiple instances of memcached, each listening on a different port:

shell> memcached -m 1024 -p11211
shell> memcached -m 1024 -p11212
shell> memcached -m 1024 -p11213

To specify a specific network interface, use the -l option to specify the IP address of the desired interface:

shell> memcached -l 192.168.0.110

To specify an alternate port to listen on, use the -p option:

shell> memcached -p 18080

If you are running memcached on the same server as the clients, you can disable the network interface and use a local UNIX socket using the -s option:

shell> memcached -s /tmp/memcached

Using a UNIX socket automatically disables network support, and saves network ports (allowing more ports to be used by your web server or other process).

To specify the maximum number of simultaneous connections to the memcached service, use the -c option:

shell> memcached -c 2048

You should use this option, either to reduce the number of connections (to prevent overloading memcached service) or to increase the number to make more effective use of the server running memcached server.

By default, memcached is configured to use 4 concurrent threads. The threading improves the performance of storing and retrieving data in the cache, using a locking system to prevent different threads overwriting or updating the same values. You may want to increase or decrease the number of threads, use the -t option:

shell> memcached -t 8

To run memcached as a daemon (background) process, use the -d option:

shell> memcached -d

Typically, you would specify the full combination of options that you want when starting memcached, and normally provide a startup script to handle the initialization of memcached. For example, the following line starts memcached with a maximum of 1024MB RAM for the cache, listening on port 11121 on the IP address 192.168.0.110, running has a background daemon:

shell> memcached -d -m 1024 -p 11121 -l 192.168.0.110

To ensure that memcached is started up on boot you should check the init script and configuration parameters. On OpenSolaris, memcached is controlled by SMF. You can enable it by using:

root-shell> svcadm enable memcached

15.2.1. memcached Deployment

When using memcached you can use a number of different potential deployment strategies and topologies. The exact strategy you use will depend on your application and environment. When developing a system for deploying memcached within your system, you should keep in mind the following points:

  • memcached is only a caching mechanism. It shouldn't be used to store information that you cannot otherwise afford to lose and then load from a different location.

  • There is no security built into the memcached protocol. At a minimum you should make sure that the servers running memcached are only accessible from inside your network, and that the network ports being used are blocked (using a firewall or similar). If the information on the memcached servers that is being stored is any sensitive, then encrypt the information before storing it in memcached.

  • memcached does not provide any sort of failover. Because there is no communication between different memcached instances. If an instance fails, your application must capable of removing it from the list, reloading the data and then writing data to another memcached instance.

  • Latency between the clients and the memcached can be a problem if you are using different physical machines for these tasks. If you find that the latency is a problem, move the memcached instances to be on the clients.

  • Key length is determined by the memcached server. The default maximum key size is 250 bytes.

  • Using a single memcached instance, especially for multiple clients, is generally a bad idea as it introduces a single point of failure. Instead provide at least two memcached instances so that a failure can be handled appropriately. If possible, you should create as many memcached nodes as possible. When adding and removing memcached instances from a pool, the hashing and distribution of key/value pairs may be affected. For information on how to avoid problems, see Section 15.2.5, “memcached Hash Types”.

15.2.2. Memory allocation within memcached

When you first start memcached, the memory that you have configured is not automatically allocated. Instead, memcached only starts allocating and reserving physical memory once you start saving information into the cache.

When you start to store data into the cache, memcached does not allocate the memory for the data on an item by item basis. Instead, a slab allocation is used to optimize memory usage and prevent memory fragmentation when information expires from the cache.

With slab allocation, memory is reserved in blocks of 1MB. The slab is divided up into a number of blocks of equal size. When you try to store a value into the cache, memcached checks the size of the value that you are adding to the cache and determines which slab contains the right size allocation for the item. If a slab with the item size already exists, the item is written to the block within the slab.

If the new item is bigger than the size of any existing blocks, then a new slab is created, divided up into blocks of a suitable size. If an existing slab with the right block size already exists, but there are no free blocks, a new slab is created. If you update an existing item with data that is larger than the existing block allocation for that key, then the key is reallocated into a suitable slab.

For example, the default size for the smallest block is 88 bytes (40 bytes of value, and the default 48 bytes for the key and flag data). If the size of the first item you store into the cache is less than 40 bytes, then a slab with a block size of 88 bytes is created and the value stored.

If the size of the data that you want to store is larger than this value, then the block size is increased by the chunk size factor until a block size large enough to hold the value is determined. The block size is always a function of the scale factor, rounded up to a block size which is exactly divisible into the chunk size.

For a sample of the structure, see Figure 15.2, “memcached memory allocation”.

Figure 15.2. memcached memory allocation

memcached memory
            allocation

The result is that you have multiple pages allocated within the range of memory allocated to memcached. Each page is 1MB in size (by default), and will be split into different number of chunks, according to the chunk size required to store the key/value pairs. Each instance will have multiple pages allocated, and a page will always be created when a new item needs to be created requiring a chunk of a particular size. A slab may consist of multiple pages, and each page within a slab will contain an equal number of chunks.

The chunk size of a new slab is determined by the base chunk size combined with the chunk size growth factor. For example, if the initial chunks are 104 bytes in size, and the default chunk size growth factor is used (1.25), then the next chunk size allocated would be the best power of 2 fit for 104*1.25, or 136 bytes.

Allocating the pages in this way ensures that memory does not get fragmented. However, depending on the distribution of the objects that you want to store, it may lead to an inefficient distribution of the slabs and chunks if you have significantly different sized items. For example, having a relatively small number of items within each chunk size may waste a lot of memory with just few chunks in each allocated page.

You can tune the growth factor to reduce this effect by using the -f command line option. This will adapt the growth factor applied to make more effective use of the chunks and slabs allocated. For information on how to determine the current slab allocation statistics, see Section 15.4.2, “memcached Slabs Statistics”.

If your operating system supports it, you can also start memcached with the -L command line option. With this option enabled, it will preallocate all the memory during startup using large memory pages. This can improve performance by reducing the number of misses in the CPU memory cache.

15.2.3. Using namespaces

The memcached cache is a very simple massive key/value storage system, and as such there is no way of compartmentalizing data automatically into different sections. For example, if you are storing information by the unique ID returned from a MySQL database, then storing the data from two different tables will run into issues because the same ID will probably be valid in both tables.

Some interfaces provide an automated mechanism for creating namespaces when storing information into the cache. In practice, these namespaces are merely a prefix before a given ID that is applied every time a value is stored or retrieve from the cache.

You can implement the same basic principle by using keys that describe the object and the unique identifier within the key that you supply when the object is stored. For example, when storing user data, prefix the ID of the user with user: or user-.

Note

Using namespaces or prefixes only controls the keys stored/retrieved. There is no security within memcached, and therefore no way to enforce that a particular client only accesses keys with a particular namespace. Namespaces are only useful as a method of identifying data and preventing corruption of key/value pairs.

15.2.4. Data Expiry

There are two types of data expiry within a memcached instance. The first type is applied at the point when you store a new key/value pair into the memcached instance. If there is not enough space within a suitable slab to store the value, then an existing least recently used (LRU) object is removed (evicted) from the cache to make room for the new item.

The LRU algorithm ensures that the object that is removed is one that is either no longer in active use or that was used so long ago that its data is potentially out of date or of little value. However, in a system where the memory allocated to memcached is smaller than the number of regularly used objects required in the cache you will see a lot of expired items being removed from the cache even though they are in active use. You use the statistics mechanism to get a better idea of the level of evictions (expired objects). For more information, see Section 15.4, “Getting memcached Statistics”.

You can change this eviction behavior by setting the -M command-line option when starting memcached. This option forces an error to be returned when the memory has been exhausted, instead of automatically evicting older data.

The second type of expiry system is an explicit mechanism that you can set when a key/value pair is inserted into the cache, or when deleting an item from the cache. Using an expiration time can be a useful way of ensuring that the data in the cache is up to date and in line with your application needs and requirements.

A typical scenario for explicitly setting the expiry time might include caching session data for a user when accessing a website. memcached uses a lazy expiry mechanism where the explicit expiry time that has been set is compared with the current time when the object is requested. Only objects that have not expired are returned.

You can also set the expiry time when explicitly deleting an object from the cache. In this case, the expiry time is really a timeout and indicates the period when any attempts to set the value for a given key are rejected.

15.2.5. memcached Hash Types

The memcached client interface supports a number of different hashing types that are used in multi-server configurations to determine which host should be used when setting or getting data from a given memcached instance. When you get or set a value, a hash is constructed from the supplied key and then used to select a host from the list of configured servers. Because the hashing mechanism uses the supplied key as the basis for the hash, the selected server will be the same during both set and get operations.

For example, if you have three servers, A, B, and C, and you set the value myid, then the memcached client will create a hash based on the ID and select server B. When the same key is requested, the same hash is generated, and the same server, B, will be selected to request the value.

Because the hashing mechanism is part of the client interface, not the server interface, the hashing process and selection is very fast. By performing the hashing on the client, it also means that if you want to access the same data by the same ID from the same list of servers but from different client interfaces, you must use the same or compatible hashing mechanisms. If you do not use the same hashing mechanism then the same data may be recorded on different servers by different interfaces, both wasting space on your memcached and leading to potential differences in the information.

Note

One way to use a multi-interface compatible hashing mechanism is to use the libmemcached library and the associated interfaces. Because the interfaces for the different languages (including C, Ruby, Perl and Python) are using the same client library interface, they will always generate the same hash code from the ID.

One issue with the client-side hashing mechanism is that when using multiple servers and extending or shrinking the list of servers that you have configured for use with memcached, the resulting hash may change. For example, if you have servers A, B, and C; the computed hash for key myid may equate to server B. If you add another server, D, into this list, then computing the hash for the same ID again may result in the selection of server D for that key.

This means that servers B and D both contain the information for key myid, but there may be differences between the data held by the two instances. A more significant problem is that you will get a much higher number of cache-misses when retrieving data as the addition of a new server will change the distribution of keys, and this will in turn require rebuilding the cached data on the memcached instances and require an increase in database reads.

For this reason, there are two common types of hashing algorithm, consistent and modula.

With consistent hashing algorithms, the same key when applied to a list of servers will always use the same server to store or retrieve the keys, even if the list of configured servers changes. This means that you can add and remove servers from the configure list and always use the same server for a given key. There are two types of consistent hashing algorithms available, Ketama and Wheel. Both types are supported by libmemcached, and implementations are available for PHP and Java.

There are some limitations with any consistent hashing algorithm. When adding servers to an existing list of configured servers, then keys will be distributed to the new servers as part of the normal distribution. When removing servers from the list, the keys will be re-allocated to another server within the list, which will mean that the cache will need to be re-populated with the information. Also, a consistent hashing algorithm does not resolve the issue where you want consistent selection of a server across multiple clients, but where each client contains a different list of servers. The consistency is enforced only within a single client.

With a modula hashing algorithm, the client will select a server by first computing the hash and then choosing a server from the list of configured servers. As the list of servers changes, so the server selected when using a modula hashing algorithm will also change. The result is the behavior described above; changes to the list of servers will mean different servers are selected when retrieving data leading to cache misses and increase in database load as the cache is re-seeded with information.

If you use only a single memcached instance for each client, or your list of memcached servers configured for a client never changes, then the selection of a hashing algorithm is irrelevant, as you will not notice the effect.

If you change your servers regularly, or you use a common set of servers that are shared among a large number of clients, then using a consistent hashing algorithm should help to ensure that your cache data is not duplicated and the data is evenly distributed.

15.3. memcached Interfaces

A number of interfaces from different languages exist for interacting with memcached servers and storing and retrieving information. Interfaces for the most common language platforms including Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, C and Java.

Data stored into a memcached server is referred to by a single string (the key), with storage into the cache and retrieval from the cache using the key as the reference. The cache therefore operates like a large associative array or hash. It is not possible to structure or otherwise organize the information stored in the cache. If you want to store information in a structured way, you must use 'formatted' keys.

The following tips may be useful to you when using memcached:

The general sequence for using memcached in any language as a caching solution is as follows:

  1. Request the item from the cache.

  2. If the item exists, use the item data.

  3. If the item does not exist, load the data from MySQL, and store the value into the cache. This means the value will be available to the next client that requests it from the cache.

For a flow diagram of this sequence, see Figure 15.3, “Typical memcached usage sequence”.

Figure 15.3. Typical memcached usage sequence

Typical memcached usage
          overview

The interface to memcached supports the following methods for storing and retrieving information in the cache, and these are consistent across all the different APIs, even though the language specific mechanics may be different:

  • get(key) — retrieves information from the cache. Returns the value if it exists, or NULL, nil, or undefined or the closest equivalent in the corresponding language, if the specified key does not exist.

  • set(key, value [, expiry]) — sets the key in the cache to the specified value. Note that this will either update an existing key if it already exists, or add a new key/value pair if the key doesn't exist. If the expiry time is specified, then the key will expire (be deleted) when the expiry time is reached. The time should be specified in seconds, and is taken as a relative time if the value is less than 30 days (30*24*60*60), or an absolute time (epoch) if larger than this value.

  • add(key, value [, expiry]) — adds the key to the cache, if the specified key doesn't already exist.

  • replace(key, value [, expiry]) — replace the value of the specified key, only if the key already exists.

  • delete(key [, time]) — Deletes the key from the cache. If you supply a time, then adding a value with the specified key is blocked for the specified period.

  • incr(key [, value]) — Increment the specified key by one or the specified value.

  • decr(key [, value]) — Decrement the specified key by one or the specified value.

  • flush_all — invalidates (or expires) all the current items in the cache. Technically they will still exist (they are not deleted), but they will be silently destroyed the next time you try to access them.

In all implementations, most or all of these functions are duplicated through the corresponding native language interface.

For all languages and interfaces, you should use memcached to store full items, rather than simply caching single rows of information from the database. For example, when displaying a record about an object (invoice, user history, or blog post), all the data for the associated entry should be loaded from the database, and compiled into the internal structure that would normally be required by the application. You then save the complete object into the cache.

Data cannot be stored directly, it needs to be serialized, and most interfaces will serialize the data for you. Perl uses Storable, PHP uses serialize, Python uses cPickle (or Pickle) and Java uses the Serializable interface. In most cases, the serialization interface used is customizable. If you want to share data stored in memcached instances between different language interfaces, consider using a common serialization solution such as JSON (Javascript Object Notation).

A summary table showing the list of available interfaces for different languages, supported hash types and any additional notes is provided below.

15.3.1. Using libmemcached

The libmemcached library provides both C and C++ interfaces to memcached and is also the basis for a number of different additional API implementations, including Perl, Python and Ruby. Understanding the core libmemcached functions can help when using these other interfaces.

The C library is the most comprehensive interface library for memcached and provides a wealth of functions and operational systems not always exposed in the other interfaces not based on the libmemcached library.

The different functions can be divided up according to their basic operation. In addition to functions that interface to the core API, there are a number of utility functions that provide extended functionality, such as appending and prepending data.

To build and install libmemcached, download the libmemcached package, run configure, and then build and install:

shell> tar xjf libmemcached-0.21.tar.gz
shell> cd libmemcached-0.21
shell> ./configure
shell> make
shell> make install

On many Linux operating systems, you can install the corresponding libmemcached package through the usual yum, apt-get or similar commands. On OpenSolaris, use pkg to install the SUNWlibmemcached package.

To build an application that uses the library, you need to first set the list of servers. You can do this either by directly manipulating the servers configured within the main memcached_st structure, or by separately populating a list of servers, and then adding this list to the memcached_st structure. The latter method is used in the example below. Once the server list has been set, you can call the functions to store or retrieve data. A simple application for setting a preset value to localhost is provided below:

root-shell>include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <libmemcached/memcached.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  memcached_server_st *servers = NULL;
  memcached_st *memc;
  memcached_return rc;
  char *key= "keystring";
  char *value= "keyvalue";

  memcached_server_st *memcached_servers_parse (char *server_strings);
  memc= memcached_create(NULL);

  servers= memcached_server_list_append(servers, "localhost", 11211, &rc);
  rc= memcached_server_push(memc, servers);

  if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
    fprintf(stderr,"Added server successfully\n");
  else
    fprintf(stderr,"Couldn't add server: %s\n",memcached_strerror(memc, rc));

  rc= memcached_set(memc, key, strlen(key), value, strlen(value), (time_t)0, (uint32_t)0);

  if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
    fprintf(stderr,"Key stored successfully\n");
  else
    fprintf(stderr,"Couldn't store key: %s\n",memcached_strerror(memc, rc));

  return 0;
}

You can test the success of an operation by using the return value, or populated result code, for a given function. The value will always be set to MEMCACHED_SUCCESS if the operation succeeded. In the event of a failure, use the memcached_strerror() function to translate the result code into a printable string.

To build the application, you must specify the memcached library:

shell> gcc -o memc_basic memc_basic.c -lmemcached

Running the above sample application, after starting a memcached server, should return a success message:

shell> memc_basic 
Added server successfully
Key stored successfully

15.3.1.1. libmemcached Base Functions

The base libmemcached functions allow you to create, destroy and clone the main memcached_st structure that is used to interface to the memcached servers. The main functions are defined below:

memcached_st *memcached_create (memcached_st *ptr);

Creates a new memcached_st structure for use with the other libmemcached API functions. You can supply an existing, static, memcached_st structure, or NULL to have a new structured allocated. Returns a pointer to the created structure, or NULL on failure.

void memcached_free (memcached_st *ptr);

Free the structure and memory allocated to a previously created memcached_st structure.

memcached_st *memcached_clone(memcached_st *clone, memcached_st *source);

Clone an existing memcached structure from the specified source, copying the defaults and list of servers defined in the structure.

15.3.1.2. libmemcached Server Functions

The libmemcached API uses a list of servers, stored within the memcached_server_st structure, to act as the list of servers used by the rest of the functions. To use memcached, you first create the server list, and then apply the list of servers to a valid libmemcached object.

Because the list of servers, and the list of servers within an active libmemcached object can be manipulated separately, you can update and manage server lists while an active libmemcached interface is running.

The functions for manipulating the list of servers within a memcached_st structure are given below:

memcached_return
           memcached_server_add (memcached_st *ptr,
                                 char *hostname,
                                 unsigned int port);

Add a server, using the given hostname and port into the memcached_st structure given in ptr.

memcached_return
           memcached_server_add_unix_socket (memcached_st *ptr,
                                             char *socket);

Add a Unix socket to the list of servers configured in the memcached_st structure.

unsigned int memcached_server_count (memcached_st *ptr);

Return a count of the number of configured servers within the memcached_st structure.

memcached_server_st *
           memcached_server_list (memcached_st *ptr);

Returns an array of all the defined hosts within a memcached_st structure.

memcached_return
           memcached_server_push (memcached_st *ptr,
                                  memcached_server_st *list);

Pushes an existing list of servers onto list of servers configured for a current memcached_st structure. This adds servers to the end of the existing list, and duplicates are not checked.

The memcached_server_st structure can be used to create a list of memcached servers which can then be applied individually to memcached_st structures.

memcached_server_st *
           memcached_server_list_append (memcached_server_st *ptr,
                                         char *hostname,
                                         unsigned int port,
                                         memcached_return *error);

Add a server, with hostname and port, to the server list in ptr. The result code is handled by the error argument, which should point to an existing memcached_return variable. The function returns a pointer to the returned list.

 unsigned int memcached_server_list_count (memcached_server_st *ptr);

Return the number of the servers in the server list.

void memcached_server_list_free (memcached_server_st *ptr);

Free up the memory associated with a server list.

memcached_server_st *memcached_servers_parse (char *server_strings);

Parses a string containing a list of servers, where individual servers are separated by a comma and/or space, and where individual servers are of the form server[:port]. The return value is a server list structure.

15.3.1.3. libmemcached Set Functions

The set related functions within libmemcached provide the same functionality as the core functions supported by the memcached protocol. The full definition for the different functions is the same for all the base functions (add, replace, prepend, append). For example, the function definition for memcached_set() is:

memcached_return
           memcached_set (memcached_st *ptr,
                          const char *key, 
                          size_t key_length,
                          const char *value, 
                          size_t value_length,
                          time_t expiration,
                          uint32_t flags);

The ptr is the memcached_st structure. The key and key_length define the key name and length, and value and value_length the corresponding value and length. You can also set the expiration and optional flags. For more information, see Section 15.3.1.5, “libmemcached Behaviors”.

The table below outlines the remainder of the set-related functions.

libmemcached FunctionEquivalent to
memcached_set(memc, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Generic set() operation.
memcached_add(memc, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Generic add() function.
memcached_replace(memc, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Generic replace().
memcached_prepend(memc, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Prepends the specified value before the current value of the specified key.
memcached_append(memc, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Appends the specified value after the current value of the specified key.
memcached_cas(memc, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags, cas)Overwrites the data for a given key as long as the corresponding cas value is still the same within the server.
memcached_set_by_key(memc, master_key, master_key_length, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Similar to the generic set(), but has the option of an additional master key that can be used to identify an individual server.
memcached_add_by_key(memc, master_key, master_key_length, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Similar to the generic add(), but has the option of an additional master key that can be used to identify an individual server.
memcached_replace_by_key(memc, master_key, master_key_length, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Similar to the generic replace(), but has the option of an additional master key that can be used to identify an individual server.
memcached_prepend_by_key(memc, master_key, master_key_length, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Similar to the memcached_prepend(), but has the option of an additional master key that can be used to identify an individual server.
memcached_append_by_key(memc, master_key, master_key_length, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Similar to the memcached_append(), but has the option of an additional master key that can be used to identify an individual server.
memcached_cas_by_key(memc, master_key, master_key_length, key, key_length, value, value_length, expiration, flags)Similar to the memcached_cas(), but has the option of an additional master key that can be used to identify an individual server.

The by_key methods add two further arguments, the master key, to be used and applied during the hashing stage for selecting the servers. You can see this in the definition below:

memcached_return
           memcached_set_by_key(memcached_st *ptr,
                                const char *master_key, 
                                size_t master_key_length,
                                const char *key,
                                size_t key_length,
                                const char *value, 
                                size_t value_length,
                                time_t expiration,
                                uint32_t flags);

All the functions return a value of type memcached_return, which you can compare against the MEMCACHED_SUCCESS constant.

15.3.1.4. libmemcached Get Functions

The libmemcached functions provide both direct access to a single item, and a multiple-key request mechanism that provides much faster responses when fetching a large number of keys simultaneously.

The main get-style function, which is equivalent to the generic get() is memcached_get(). The functions a string pointer to the returned value for a corresponding key.

char *memcached_get (memcached_st *ptr,
                     const char *key, size_t key_length,
                     size_t *value_length,
                     uint32_t *flags,
                     memcached_return *error);

A multi-key get, memcached_mget(), is also available. Using a multiple key get operation is much quicker to do in one block than retrieving the key values with individual calls to memcached_get(). To start the multi-key get, you need to call memcached_mget():

memcached_return
         memcached_mget (memcached_st *ptr,
                         char **keys, size_t *key_length,
                         unsigned int number_of_keys);

The return value is the success of the operation. The keys parameter should be an array of strings containing the keys, and key_length an array containing the length of each corresponding key. number_of_keys is the number of keys supplied in the array.

To fetch the individual values, you need to use memcached_fetch() to get each corresponding value.

char *memcached_fetch (memcached_st *ptr,
                         const char *key, size_t *key_length,
                         size_t *value_length,
                         uint32_t *flags,
                         memcached_return *error);

The function returns the key value, with the key, key_length and value_length parameters being populated with the corresponding key and length information. The function returns NULL when there are no more values to be returned. A full example, including the populating of the key data and the return of the information is provided below.

root-shell>include <stdio.h>
#include <sstring.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <libmemcached/memcached.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  memcached_server_st *servers = NULL;
  memcached_st *memc;
  memcached_return rc;
  char *keys[]= {"huey", "dewey", "louie"};
  size_t key_length[3];
  char *values[]= {"red", "blue", "green"};
  size_t value_length[3];
  unsigned int x;
  uint32_t flags;

  char return_key[MEMCACHED_MAX_KEY];
  size_t return_key_length;
  char *return_value;
  size_t return_value_length;

  memc= memcached_create(NULL);

  servers= memcached_server_list_append(servers, "localhost", 11211, &rc);
  rc= memcached_server_push(memc, servers);

  if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
    fprintf(stderr,"Added server successfully\n");
  else
    fprintf(stderr,"Couldn't add server: %s\n",memcached_strerror(memc, rc));

  for(x= 0; x < 3; x++)
    {
      key_length[x] = strlen(keys[x]);
      value_length[x] = strlen(values[x]);

      rc= memcached_set(memc, keys[x], key_length[x], values[x],
                        value_length[x], (time_t)0, (uint32_t)0);
      if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
        fprintf(stderr,"Key %s stored successfully\n",keys[x]);
      else
        fprintf(stderr,"Couldn't store key: %s\n",memcached_strerror(memc, rc));
    }

  rc= memcached_mget(memc, keys, key_length, 3);

  if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
    {
      while ((return_value= memcached_fetch(memc, return_key, &return_key_length,
                                            &return_value_length, &flags, &rc)) != NULL)
        {
          if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
            {
              fprintf(stderr,"Key %s returned %s\n",return_key, return_value);
            }
        }
    }

  return 0;
}

Running the above application:

shell> memc_multi_fetch 
Added server successfully
Key huey stored successfully
Key dewey stored successfully
Key louie stored successfully
Key huey returned red
Key dewey returned blue
Key louie returned green

15.3.1.5. libmemcached Behaviors

The behavior of libmemcached can be modified by setting one or more behavior flags. These can either be set globally, or they can be applied during the call to individual functions. Some behaviors also accept an additional setting, such as the hashing mechanism used when selecting servers.

To set global behaviors:

memcached_return
           memcached_behavior_set (memcached_st *ptr,
                                   memcached_behavior flag,
                                   uint64_t data);

To get the current behavior setting:

uint64_t
           memcached_behavior_get (memcached_st *ptr,
                                   memcached_behavior flag);
BehaviorDescription
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_NO_BLOCKCaused libmemcached to use asynchronous I/O.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_TCP_NODELAYTurns on no-delay for network sockets.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_HASHWithout a value, sets the default hashing algorithm for keys to use MD5. Other valid values include MEMCACHED_HASH_DEFAULT, MEMCACHED_HASH_MD5, MEMCACHED_HASH_CRC, MEMCACHED_HASH_FNV1_64, MEMCACHED_HASH_FNV1A_64, MEMCACHED_HASH_FNV1_32, and MEMCACHED_HASH_FNV1A_32.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_DISTRIBUTIONChanges the method of selecting the server used to store a given value. The default method is MEMCACHED_DISTRIBUTION_MODULA. You can enable consistent hashing by setting MEMCACHED_DISTRIBUTION_CONSISTENT. MEMCACHED_DISTRIBUTION_CONSISTENT is an alias for the value MEMCACHED_DISTRIBUTION_CONSISTENT_KETAMA.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_CACHE_LOOKUPSCache the lookups made to the DNS service. This can improve the performance if you are using names instead of IP addresses for individual hosts.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_SUPPORT_CASSupport CAS operations. By default, this is disabled because it imposes a performance penalty.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_KETAMASets the default distribution to MEMCACHED_DISTRIBUTION_CONSISTENT_KETAMA and the hash to MEMCACHED_HASH_MD5.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_POLL_TIMEOUTModify the timeout value used by poll(). You should supply a signed int pointer for the timeout value.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_BUFFER_REQUESTSBuffers IO requests instead of them being sent. A get operation, or closing the connection will cause the data to be flushed.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_VERIFY_KEYForces libmemcached to verify that a specified key is valid.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_SORT_HOSTSIf set, hosts added to the list of configured hosts for a memcached_st structure will placed into the host list in sorted order. This will break consistent hashing if that behavior has been enabled.
MEMCACHED_BEHAVIOR_CONNECT_TIMEOUTIn non-blocking mode this changes the value of the timeout during socket connection.

15.3.1.6. libmemcached Command-line Utilities

In addition to the main C library interface, libmemcached also includes a number of command line utilities that can be useful when working with and debugging memcached applications.

All of the command line tools accept a number of arguments, the most critical of which is servers, which specifies the list of servers to connect to when returning information.

The main tools are:

  • memcat — display the value for each ID given on the command line:

    shell> memcat --servers=localhost hwkey
    Hello world
  • memcp — copy the contents of a file into the cache, using the file names as the key:

    shell> echo "Hello World" > hwkey
    shell> memcp --servers=localhost hwkey
    shell> memcat --servers=localhost hwkey
    Hello world
    
  • memrm — remove an item from the cache:

    shell> memcat --servers=localhost hwkey
    Hello world
    shell> memrm --servers=localhost hwkey
    shell> memcat --servers=localhost hwkey
  • memslap — test the load on one or more memcached servers, simulating get/set and multiple client operations. For example, you can simulate the load of 100 clients performing get operations:

    shell> memslap --servers=localhost --concurrency=100 --flush --test=get
    memslap --servers=localhost --concurrency=100 --flush --test=get	Threads connecting to servers 100
    	Took 13.571 seconds to read data
    
  • memflush — flush (empty) the contents of the memcached cache.

    shell> memflush --servers=localhost

15.3.2. Using MySQL and memcached with Perl

The Cache::Memcached module provides a native interface to the Memcache protocol, and provides support for the core functions offered by memcached. You should install the module using your hosts native package management system. Alternatively, you can install the module using CPAN:

root-shell> perl -MCPAN -e 'install Cache::Memcached'

To use memcached from Perl through Cache::Memcached module, you first need to create a new Cache::Memcached object that defines the list of servers and other parameters for the connection. The only argument is a hash containing the options for the cache interface. For example, to create a new instance that uses three memcached servers:

use Cache::Memcached;

my $cache = new Cache::Memcached {
    'servers' => [
        '192.168.0.100:11211',
        '192.168.0.101:11211',
        '192.168.0.102:11211',
	],
};

Note

When using the Cache::Memcached interface with multiple servers, the API automatically performs certain operations across all the servers in the group. For example, getting statistical information through Cache::Memcached returns a hash that contains data on a host by host basis, as well as generalized statistics for all the servers in the group.

You can set additional properties on the cache object instance when it is created by specifying the option as part of the option hash. Alternatively, you can use a corresponding method on the instance:

  • servers or method set_servers() — specifies the list of the servers to be used. The servers list should be a reference to an array of servers, with each element as the address and port number combination (separated by a colon). You can also specify a local connection through a UNIX socket (for example /tmp/sock/memcached). You can also specify the server with a weight (indicating how much more frequently the server should be used during hashing) by specifying an array reference with the memcached server instance and a weight number. Higher numbers give higher priority.

  • compress_threshold or method set_compress_threshold()— specifies the threshold when values are compressed. Values larger than the specified number are automatically compressed (using zlib) during storage and retrieval.

  • no_rehash or method set_norehash() — disables finding a new server if the original choice is unavailable.

  • readonly or method set_readonly()— disables writes to the memcached servers.

Once the Cache::Memcached object instance has been configured you can use the set() and get() methods to store and retrieve information from the memcached servers. Objects stored in the cache are automatically serialized and deserialized using the Storable module.

The Cache::Memcached interface supports the following methods for storing/retrieving data, and relate to the generic methods as shown in the table.

Cache::Memcached FunctionEquivalent to
get()Generic get()
get_multi(keys)Gets multiple keys from memcache using just one query. Returns a hash reference of key/value pairs.
set()Generic set()
add()Generic add()
replace()Generic replace()
delete()Generic delete()
incr()Generic incr()
decr()Generic decr()

Below is a complete example for using memcached with Perl and the Cache::Memcached module:

root-shell>!/usr/bin/perl

use Cache::Memcached;
use DBI;
use Data::Dumper;

# Configure the memcached server

my $cache = new Cache::Memcached {
    'servers' => [
                   'localhost:11211',
                   ],
    };

# Get the film name from the command line
# memcached keys must not contain spaces, so create
# a key name by replacing spaces with underscores

my $filmname = shift or die "Must specify the film name\n";
my $filmkey = $filmname;
$filmkey =~ s/ /_/;

# Load the data from the cache

my $filmdata = $cache->get($filmkey);

# If the data wasn't in the cache, then we load it from the database

if (!defined($filmdata))
{
    $filmdata = load_filmdata($filmname);

    if (defined($filmdata))
    {

# Set the data into the cache, using the key

	if ($cache->set($filmkey,$filmdata))
        {
            print STDERR "Film data loaded from database and cached\n";
        }
        else
        {
            print STDERR "Couldn't store to cache\n";
	}
    }
    else
    {
     	die "Couldn't find $filmname\n";
    }
}
else
{
    print STDERR "Film data loaded from Memcached\n";
}

sub load_filmdata
{
    my ($filmname) = @_;

    my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=sakila;host=localhost;port=3306";

    $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, 'sakila','password');

    my ($filmbase) = $dbh->selectrow_hashref(sprintf('select * from film where title = %s',
                                                     $dbh->quote($filmname)));

    if (!defined($filmname))
    {
     	return (undef);
    }

    $filmbase->{stars} =
	$dbh->selectall_arrayref(sprintf('select concat(first_name," ",last_name) ' .
                                         'from film_actor left join (actor) ' .
                                         'on (film_actor.actor_id = actor.actor_id) ' .
                                         ' where film_id=%s',
                                         $dbh->quote($filmbase->{film_id})));

    return($filmbase);
}

The example uses the Sakila database, obtaining film data from the database and writing a composite record of the film and actors to memcache. When calling it for a film does not exist, you should get this result:

shell> memcached-sakila.pl "ROCK INSTINCT"
Film data loaded from database and cached

When accessing a film that has already been added to the cache:

shell> memcached-sakila.pl "ROCK INSTINCT"
Film data loaded from Memcached

15.3.3. Using MySQL and memcached with Python

The Python memcache module interfaces to memcached servers, and is written in pure python (i.e. without using one of the C APIs). You can download and install a copy from Python Memcached.

To install, download the package and then run the Python installer:

python setup.py install
running install
running bdist_egg
running egg_info
creating python_memcached.egg-info
...
removing 'build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg' (and everything under it)
Processing python_memcached-1.43-py2.4.egg
creating /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/python_memcached-1.43-py2.4.egg
Extracting python_memcached-1.43-py2.4.egg to /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages
Adding python-memcached 1.43 to easy-install.pth file

Installed /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/python_memcached-1.43-py2.4.egg
Processing dependencies for python-memcached==1.43
Finished processing dependencies for python-memcached==1.43

Once installed, the memcache module provides a class-based interface to your memcached servers. Serialization of Python structures is handled by using the Python cPickle or pickle modules.

To create a new memcache interface, import the memcache module and create a new instance of the memcache.Client class:

import memcache
memc = memcache.Client(['127.0.0.1:11211'])

The first argument should be an array of strings containing the server and port number for each memcached instance you want to use. You can enable debugging by setting the optional debug parameter to 1.

By default, the hashing mechanism used is crc32. This provides a basic module hashing algorithm for selecting among multiple servers. You can change the function used by setting the value of memcache.serverHashFunction to the alternate function you want to use. For example:

from zlib import adler32
memcache.serverHashFunction = adler32

Once you have defined the servers to use within the memcache instance, the core functions provide the same functionality as in the generic interface specification. A summary of the supported functions is provided in the table below.

Python memcache FunctionEquivalent to
get()Generic get()
get_multi(keys)Gets multiple values from the supplied array of keys. Returns a hash reference of key/value pairs.
set()Generic set()
set_multi(dict [, expiry [, key_prefix]])Sets multiple key/value pairs from the supplied dict.
add()Generic add()
replace()Generic replace()
prepend(key, value [, expiry])Prepends the supplied value to the value of the existing key.
append(key, value [, expiry[)Appends the supplied value to the value of the existing key.
delete()Generic delete()
delete_multi(keys [, expiry [, key_prefix]] )Deletes all the keys from the hash matching each string in the array keys.
incr()Generic incr()
decr()Generic decr()

Note

Within the Python memcache module, all the *_multi()functions support an optional key_prefix parameter. If supplied, then the string is used as a prefix to all key lookups. For example, if you call:

memc.get_multi(['a','b'], key_prefix='users:')

The function will retrieve the keys users:a and users:b from the servers.

An example showing the storage and retrieval of information to a memcache instance, loading the raw data from MySQL, is shown below:

import sys
import MySQLdb
import memcache

memc = memcache.Client(['127.0.0.1:11211'], debug=1);

try:
    conn = MySQLdb.connect (host = "localhost",
                            user = "sakila",
                            passwd = "password",
                            db = "sakila")
except MySQLdb.Error, e:
     print "Error %d: %s" % (e.args[0], e.args[1])
     sys.exit (1)

popularfilms = memc.get('top5films')

if not popularfilms:
    cursor = conn.cursor()
    cursor.execute('select film_id,title from film order by rental_rate desc limit 5')
    rows = cursor.fetchall()
    memc.set('top5films',rows,60)
    print "Updated memcached with MySQL data"
else:
    print "Loaded data from memcached"
    for row in popularfilms:
        print "%s, %s" % (row[0], row[1])

When executed for the first time, the data is loaded from the MySQL database and stored to the memcached server.

shell> python memc_python.py
Updated memcached with MySQL data

The data is automatically serialized using cPickle/pickle. This means when you load the data back from memcached, you can use the object directly. In the example above, the information stored to memcached is in the form of rows from a Python DB cursor. When accessing the information (within the 60 second expiry time), the data is loaded from memcached and dumped:

shell> python memc_python.py
Loaded data from memcached
2, ACE GOLDFINGER
7, AIRPLANE SIERRA
8, AIRPORT POLLOCK
10, ALADDIN CALENDAR
13, ALI FOREVER

The serialization and deserialization happens automatically, but be aware that serialization of Python data may be incompatible with other interfaces and languages. You can change the serialization module used during initialization, for example to use JSON, which will be more easily exchanged.

15.3.4. Using MySQL and memcached with PHP

PHP provides support for the Memcache functions through a PECL extension. To enable the PHP memcache extensions, you must build PHP using the --enable-memcache option to configure when building from source.

If you are installing on a RedHat based server, you can install the php-pecl-memcache RPM:

root-shell> yum --install php-pecl-memcache

On Debian based distributions, use the php-memcache package.

You can set global runtime configuration options by specifying the values in the following table within your php.ini file.

Configuration optionDefaultDescription
memcache.allow_failover1Specifies whether another server in the list should be queried if the first server selected fails.
memcache.max_failover_attempts20Specifies the number of servers to try before returning a failure.
memcache.chunk_size8192Defines the size of network chunks used to exchange data with the memcached server.
memcache.default_port11211Defines the default port to use when communicating with the memcached servers.
memcache.hash_strategystandardSpecifies which hash strategy to use. Set to consistent to allow servers to be added or removed from the pool without causing the keys to be remapped to other servers. When set to standard, an older (modula) strategy is used that potentially uses different servers for storage.
memcache.hash_functioncrc32Specifies which function to use when mapping keys to servers. crc32 uses the standard CRC32 hash. fnv uses the FNV-1a hashing algorithm.

To create a connection to a memcached server, you need to create a new Memcache object and then specifying the connection options. For example:

<?php

$cache = new Memcache;
$cache->connect('localhost',11121);
?>

This opens an immediate connection to the specified server.

To use multiple memcached servers, you need to add servers to the memcache object using addServer():

bool Memcache::addServer ( string $host [, int $port [, bool $persistent 
                 [, int $weight [, int $timeout [, int $retry_interval 
                 [, bool $status [, callback $failure_callback 
                 ]]]]]]] )

The server management mechanism within the php-memcache module is a critical part of the interface as it controls the main interface to the memcached instances and how the different instances are selected through the hashing mechanism.

To create a simple connection to two memcached instances:

<?php

$cache = new Memcache;
$cache->addServer('192.168.0.100',11211);
$cache->addServer('192.168.0.101',11211);
?>

In this scenario the instance connection is not explicitly opened, but only opened when you try to store or retrieve a value. You can enable persistent connections to memcached instances by setting the $persistent argument to true. This is the default setting, and will cause the connections to remain open.

To help control the distribution of keys to different instances, you should use the global memcache.hash_strategy setting. This sets the hashing mechanism used to select. You can also add an additional weight to each server, which effectively increases the number of times the instance entry appears in the instance list, therefore increasing the likelihood of the instance being chosen over other instances. To set the weight, set the value of the $weight argument to more than one.

The functions for setting and retrieving information are identical to the generic functional interface offered by memcached, as shown in this table.

PECL memcache FunctionEquivalent to
get()Generic get()
set()Generic set()
add()Generic add()
replace()Generic replace()
delete()Generic delete()
increment()Generic incr()
decrement()Generic decr()

A full example of the PECL memcache interface is provided below. The code loads film data from the Sakila database when the user provides a film name. The data stored into the memcached instance is recorded as a mysqli result row, and the API automatically serializes the information for you.

<?php

$memc = new Memcache;
$memc->addServer('localhost','11211');
?>

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
 <title>Simple Memcache Lookup</title>
</head>
<body>
<form method="post">
  <p><b>Film</b>: <input type="text" size="20" name="film"></p>
<input type="submit">
</form>
<hr/>

<?php

  echo "Loading data...\n";

$value = $memc->get($_REQUEST['film']);

if ($value)
  {
    printf("<p>Film data for %s loaded from memcache</p>",$value['title']);

    foreach (array_keys($value) as $key)
      { 
	printf("<p><b>%s</b>: %s</p>",$key, $value[$key]);
      } 
  }
 else
   {
     $con = new mysqli('localhost','sakila','password','sakila') or
       die ("<h1>Database problem</h1>" . mysqli_connect_error());

     $result = $con->query(sprintf('select * from film where title ="%s"',$_REQUEST['film']));

     $row = $result->fetch_array(MYSQLI_ASSOC);

     $memc->set($row['title'],$row);

     printf("<p>Loaded %s from MySQL</p>",$row['title']);
   }

?>

With PHP, the connections to the memcached instances are kept open as long as the PHP and associated Apache instance remain running. When adding a removing servers from the list in a running instance (for example, when starting another script that mentions additional servers), the connections will be shared, but the script will only select among the instances explicitly configured within the script.

To ensure that changes to the server list within a script do not cause problems, make sure to use the consistent hashing mechanism.

15.3.5. Using MySQL and memcached with Ruby

There are a number of different modules for interfacing to memcached within Ruby. The Ruby-MemCache client library provides a native interface to memcached that does not require any external libraries, such as libmemcached. You can obtain the installer package from http://www.deveiate.org/projects/RMemCache.

To install, extract the package and then run install.rb:

shell> install.rb

If you have RubyGems, you can install the Ruby-MemCache gem:

shell> gem install Ruby-MemCache
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Install required dependency io-reactor? [Yn]  y
Successfully installed Ruby-MemCache-0.0.1
Successfully installed io-reactor-0.05
Installing ri documentation for io-reactor-0.05...
Installing RDoc documentation for io-reactor-0.05...

To use a memcached instance from within Ruby, create a new instance of the MemCache object.

require 'memcache'
memc = MemCache::new '192.168.0.100:11211'

You can add a weight to each server to increase the likelihood of the server being selected during hashing by appending the weight count to the server hostname/port string:

require 'memcache'
memc = MemCache::new '192.168.0.100:11211:3'

To add servers to an existing list, you can append them directly to the MemCache object:

memc += ["192.168.0.101:11211"]

To set data into the cache, you can just assign a value to a key within the new cache object, which works just like a standard Ruby hash object:

memc["key"] = "value"

Or to retrieve the value:

print memc["key"]

For more explicit actions, you can use the method interface, which mimics the main memcached API functions, as summarized in the table below.

Ruby MemCache MethodEquivalent to
get()Generic get()
get_hash(keys)Get the values of multiple keys, returning the information as a hash of the keys and their values.
set()Generic set()
set_many(pairs)Set the values of the keys and values in the hash pairs.
add()Generic add()
replace()Generic replace()
delete()Generic delete()
incr()Generic incr()
decr()Generic decr()

15.3.6. Using MySQL and memcached with Java

The com.danga.MemCached class within Java provides a native interface to memcached instances. You can obtain the client from http://whalin.com/memcached/. The Java class uses hashes that are compatible with libmemcached, so you can mix and match Java and libmemcached applications accessing the same memcached instances. The serialization between Java and other interfaces will not be compatible. If this is a problem, use JSON or a similar non-binary serialization format.

On most systems you can download the package and use the jar directly. On OpenSolaris, use pkg to install the SUNWmemcached-java package.

To use the com.danga.MemCached interface, you create a MemCachedClient instance and then configure the list of servers by configuring the SockIOPool. Through the pool specification you set up the server list, weighting, and the connection parameters to optimized the connections between your client and the memcached instances that you configure.

Generally you can configure the memcached interface once within a single class and then use this interface throughout the rest of your application.

For example, to create a basic interface, first configure the MemCachedClient and base SockIOPool settings:

public class MyClass {
                                        
    protected static MemCachedClient mcc = new MemCachedClient();
                                      
    static {
	                                      
        String[] servers =
            {
                "localhost:11211",
            };
	
        Integer[] weights = { 1 };
	                                      
        SockIOPool pool = SockIOPool.getInstance();
	                                      
        pool.setServers( servers );
        pool.setWeights( weights );

In the above sample, the list of servers is configured by creating an array of the memcached instances that you want to use. You can then configure individual weights for each server.

The remainder of the properties for the connection are optional, but you can set the connection numbers (initial connections, minimum connections, maximum connections, and the idle timeout) by setting the pool parameters:

pool.setInitConn( 5 );
pool.setMinConn( 5 );
pool.setMaxConn( 250 );
pool.setMaxIdle( 1000 * 60 * 60 * 6 

Once the parameters have been configured, initialize the connection pool:

pool.initialize();

The pool, and the connection to your memcached instances should now be ready to use.

To set the hashing algorithm used to select the server used when storing a given key you can use pool.setHashingAlg():

pool.setHashingAlg( SockIOPool.NEW_COMPAT_HASH );

Valid values ares NEW_COMPAT_HASH, OLD_COMPAT_HASH and NATIVE_HASH are also basic modula hashing algorithms. For a consistent hashing algorithm, use CONSISTENT_HASH. These constants are equivalent to the corresponding hash settings within libmemcached.

Java com.danga.MemCached MethodEquivalent to
get()Generic get()
getMulti(keys)Get the values of multiple keys, returning the information as Hash map using java.lang.String for the keys and java.lang.Object for the corresponding values.
set()Generic set()
add()Generic add()
replace()Generic replace()
delete()Generic delete()
incr()Generic incr()
decr()Generic decr()

15.3.7. Using the MySQL memcached UDFs

The memcached MySQL User Defined Functions (UDFs) enable you to set and retrieve objects from within MySQL 5.0 or greater.

To install the MySQL memcached UDFs, download the UDF package from http://tangent.org/586/Memcached_Functions_for_MySQL.html. You will need to unpack the package and run configure to configure the build process. When running configure, use the --with-mysql option and specify the location of the mysql_config command. Note that you must be running :

shell> tar zxf memcached_functions_mysql-0.5.tar.gz
shell> cd memcached_functions_mysql-0.5
shell> ./configure --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

Now build and install the functions:

shell> make
shell> make install

You may want to copy the MySQL memcached UDFs into your MySQL plugins directory:

shell> cp /usr/local/lib/libmemcached_functions_mysql* /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/plugins/

Once installed, you must initialize the function within MySQL using CREATE and specifying the return value and library. For example, to add the memc_get() function:

mysql> CREATE FUNCTION memc_get RETURNS STRING SONAME "libmemcached_functions_mysql.so";

You must repeat this process for each function that you want to provide access to within MySQL. Once you have created the association, the information will be retained, even over restarts of the MySQL server. You can simplify the process by using the SQL script provided in the memcached UDFs package:

shell> mysql <sql/install_functions.sql

Alternatively, if you have Perl installed, then you can use the supplied Perl script, which will check for the existence of each function and create the function/library association if it has not already been defined:

shell> utils/install.pl --silent

The --silent option installs everything automatically. Without this option, the script will ask whether you want to install each of the available functions.

The interface remains consistent with the other APIs and interfaces. To set up a list of servers, use the memc_servers_set() function, which accepts a single string containing and comma-separated list of servers:

mysql> SELECT memc_servers_set('192.168.0.1:11211,192.168.0.2:11211');

Note

The list of servers used by the memcached UDFs is not persistent over restarts of the MySQL server. If the MySQL server fails, then you must re-set the list of memcached servers.

To set a value, use memc_set:

mysql> SELECT memc_set('myid', 'myvalue');

To retrieve a stored value:

mysql> SELECT memc_get('myid');

The list of functions supported by the UDFs, in relation to the standard protocol functions, is shown in the table below.

MySQL memcached UDF FunctionEquivalent to
memc_get()Generic get()
memc_get_by_key(master_key, key, value)Like the generic get(), but uses the supplied master key to select the server to use.
memc_set()Generic set()
memc_set_by_key(master_key, key, value)Like the generic set(), but uses the supplied master key to select the server to use.
memc_add()Generic add()
memc_add_by_key(master_key, key, value)Like the generic add(), but uses the supplied master key to select the server to use.
memc_replace()Generic replace()
memc_replace_by_key(master_key, key, value)Like the generic replace(), but uses the supplied master key to select the server to use.
memc_prepend(key, value)Prepend the specified value to the current value of the specified key.
memc_append(key, value)Append the specified value to the current value of the specified key.
memc_delete()Generic delete()
memc_delete_by_key(master_key, key, value)Like the generic delete(), but uses the supplied master key to select the server to use.
memc_incr()Generic incr()
memc_decr()Generic decr()

The memcached UDFs also support the different behaviors as provided by the libmemcached library. You can set these by using the memc_servers_behavior_set() function. For more information on libmemcached behaviors, see Section 15.3.1, “Using libmemcached.

15.4. Getting memcached Statistics

The memcached system has a built in statistics system that collects information about the data being stored into the cache, cache hit ratios, and detailed information on the memory usage and distribution of information through the slab allocation used to store individual items. Statistics are provided at both a basic level that provide the core statistics, and more specific statistics for specific areas of the memcached server.

This information can prove be very useful to ensure that you are getting the correct level of cache and memory usage, and that your slab allocation and configuration properties are set at an optimal level.

The stats interface is available through the standard memcached protocol, so the reports can be accessed by using telnet to connect to the memcached. Alternatively, most of the language API interfaces provide a function for obtaining the statistics from the server.

For example, to get the basic stats using telnet:

shell> telnet localhost 11211
Trying ::1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
stats
STAT pid 23599
STAT uptime 675
STAT time 1211439587
STAT version 1.2.5
STAT pointer_size 32
STAT rusage_user 1.404992
STAT rusage_system 4.694685
STAT curr_items 32
STAT total_items 56361
STAT bytes 2642
STAT curr_connections 53
STAT total_connections 438
STAT connection_structures 55
STAT cmd_get 113482
STAT cmd_set 80519
STAT get_hits 78926
STAT get_misses 34556
STAT evictions 0
STAT bytes_read 6379783
STAT bytes_written 4860179
STAT limit_maxbytes 67108864
STAT threads 1
END

When using Perl and the Cache::Memcached module, the stats() function returns information about all the servers currently configured in the connection object, and total statistics for all the memcached servers as a whole.

For example, the Perl script below will obtain the stats and dump the hash reference that is returned:

use Cache::Memcached;
use Data::Dumper;

my $memc = new Cache::Memcached;
$memc->set_servers(\@ARGV);

print Dumper($memc->stats());

When executed on the same memcached as used in the Telnet example above we get a hash reference with the host by host and total statistics:

$VAR1 = {
          'hosts' => {
                       'localhost:11211' => {
                                              'misc' => {
                                                          'bytes' => '2421',
                                                          'curr_connections' => '3',
                                                          'connection_structures' => '56',
                                                          'pointer_size' => '32',
                                                          'time' => '1211440166',
                                                          'total_items' => '410956',
                                                          'cmd_set' => '588167',
                                                          'bytes_written' => '35715151',
                                                          'evictions' => '0',
                                                          'curr_items' => '31',
                                                          'pid' => '23599',
                                                          'limit_maxbytes' => '67108864',
                                                          'uptime' => '1254',
                                                          'rusage_user' => '9.857805',
                                                          'cmd_get' => '838451',
                                                          'rusage_system' => '34.096988',
                                                          'version' => '1.2.5',
                                                          'get_hits' => '581511',
                                                          'bytes_read' => '46665716',
                                                          'threads' => '1',
                                                          'total_connections' => '3104',
                                                          'get_misses' => '256940'
                                                        },
                                              'sizes' => {
                                                           '128' => '16',
                                                           '64' => '15'
                                                         }
                                            }
                     },
          'self' => {},
          'total' => {
                       'cmd_get' => 838451,
                       'bytes' => 2421,
                       'get_hits' => 581511,
                       'connection_structures' => 56,
                       'bytes_read' => 46665716,
                       'total_items' => 410956,
                       'total_connections' => 3104,
                       'cmd_set' => 588167,
                       'bytes_written' => 35715151,
                       'curr_items' => 31,
                       'get_misses' => 256940
                     }
        };

The statistics are divided up into a number of distinct sections, and then can be requested by adding the type to the stats command. Each statistics output is covered in more detail in the following sections.

15.4.1. memcached General Statistics

The output of the general statistics provides an overview of the performance and use of the memcached instance. The statistics returned by the command and their meaning is shown in the table below.

StatisticDescription
pidProcess id of the memcached instance.
uptimeUptime (in seconds) for this memcached instance.
timeCurrent time (as epoch).
versionVersion string of this instance.
pointer_sizeSize of pointers for this host.
rusage_userTotal user time for this instance (seconds:microseconds).
rusage_systemTotal system time for this instance (seconds:microseconds).
curr_itemsCurrent number of items stored by this instance.
total_itemsTotal number of items stored during the life of this instance.
bytesCurrent number of bytes used by this server to store items.
curr_connectionsCurrent number of open connections.
total_connectionsTotal number of connections opened since the server started running.
connection_structuresNumber of connection structures allocated by the server.
cmd_getTotal number of retrieval requests (get operations).
cmd_setTotal number of storage requests (set operations).
get_hitsNumber of keys that have been requested and found present.
get_missesNumber of items that have been requested and not found.
evictionsNumber of valid items removed from cache to free memory for new items.
bytes_readTotal number of bytes read by this server from network.
bytes_writtenTotal number of bytes sent by this server to network.
limit_maxbytesNumber of bytes this server is allowed to use for storage.
threadsNumber of worker threads requested.

The most useful statistics from those given here are the number of cache hits, misses, and evictions.

A large number of get_misses may just be an indication that the cache is still being populated with information. The number should, over time, decrease in comparison to the number of cache get_hits. If, however, you have a large number of cache misses compared to cache hits after an extended period of execution, it may be an indication that the size of the cache is too small and you either need to increase the total memory size, or increase the number of the memcached instances to improve the hit ratio.

A large number of evictions from the cache, particularly in comparison to the number of items stored is a sign that your cache is too small to hold the amount of information that you regularly want to keep cached. Instead of items being retained in the cache, items are being evicted to make way for new items keeping the turnover of items in the cache high, reducing the efficiency of the cache.

15.4.2. memcached Slabs Statistics

To get the slabs statistics, use the stats slabs command, or the API equivalent.

The slab statistics provide you with information about the slabs that have created and allocated for storing information within the cache. You get information both on each individual slab-class and total statistics for the whole slab.

STAT 1:chunk_size 104
STAT 1:chunks_per_page 10082
STAT 1:total_pages 1
STAT 1:total_chunks 10082
STAT 1:used_chunks 10081
STAT 1:free_chunks 1
STAT 1:free_chunks_end 10079
STAT 9:chunk_size 696
STAT 9:chunks_per_page 1506
STAT 9:total_pages 63
STAT 9:total_chunks 94878
STAT 9:used_chunks 94878
STAT 9:free_chunks 0
STAT 9:free_chunks_end 0
STAT active_slabs 2
STAT total_malloced 67083616
END

Individual stats for each slab class are prefixed with the slab ID. A unique ID is given to each allocated slab from the smallest size up to the largest. The prefix number indicates the slab class number in relation to the calculated chunk from the specified growth factor. Hence in the example, 1 is the first chunk size and 9 is the 9th chunk allocated size.

The different parameters returned for each chunk size and the totals are shown in the table below:

StatisticDescription
chunk_sizeSpace allocated to each chunk within this slab class.
chunks_per_pageNumber of chunks within a single page for this slab class.
total_pagesNumber of pages allocated to this slab class.
total_chunksNumber of chunks allocated to the slab class.
used_chunksNumber of chunks allocated to an item..
free_chunksNumber of chunks not yet allocated to items.
free_chunks_endNumber of free chunks at the end of the last allocated page.
active_slabsTotal number of slab classes allocated.
total_mallocedTotal amount of memory allocated to slab pages.

The key values in the slab statistics are the chunk_size, and the corresponding total_chunks and used_chunks parameters. These given an indication of the size usage of the chunks within the system. Remember that one key/value pair will be placed into a chunk of a suitable size.

From these stats you can get an idea of your size and chunk allocation and distribution. If you are storing many items with a number of largely different sizes, then you may want to adjust the chunk size growth factor to increase in larger steps to prevent chunk and memory wastage. A good indication of a bad growth factor is a high number of different slab classes, but with relatively few chunks actually in use within each slab. Increasing the growth factor will create fewer slab classes and therefore make better use of the allocated pages.

15.4.3. memcached Item Statistics

To get the items statistics, use the stats items command, or the API equivalent.

The items statistics give information about the individual items allocated within a given slab class.

STAT items:2:number 1
STAT items:2:age 452
STAT items:2:evicted 0
STAT items:2:outofmemory 0
STAT items:27:number 1
STAT items:27:age 452
STAT items:27:evicted 0
STAT items:27:outofmemory 0

The prefix number against each statistics relates to the corresponding chunk size, as returned by the stats slabs statistics. The result is a display of the number of items stored within each chunk within each slab size, and specific statistics about their age, eviction counts, and out of memory counts. A summary of the statistics is given in the table below.

StatisticDescription
numberThe number of items currently stored in this slab class.
ageThe age of the oldest item within the slab class, in seconds.
evictedThe number of items evicted to make way for new entries.
outofmemoryThe number of items for this slab class that have triggered an out of memory error (only value when the -M command line option is in effect).

Item level statistics can be used to determine how many items are stored within a given slab and their freshness and recycle rate. You can use this to help identify whether there are certain slab classes that are triggering a much larger number of evictions that others.

15.4.4. memcached Size Statistics

To get size statistics, use the stats sizes command, or the API equivalent.

The size statistics provide information about the sizes and number of items of each size within the cache. The information is returned as two columns, the first column is the size of the item (rounded up to the nearest 32 byte boundary), and the second column is the count of the number of items of that size within the cache:

96 35
128 38
160 807
192 804
224 410
256 222
288 83
320 39
352 53
384 33
416 64
448 51
480 30
512 54
544 39
576 10065

Caution

Running this statistic will lock up your cache as each item is read from the cache and it's size calculated. On a large cache, this may take some time and prevent any set or get operations until the process completes.

The item size statistics are useful only to determine the sizes of the objects you are storing. Since the actual memory allocation is relevant only in terms of the chunk size and page size, the information will only be useful during a careful debugging or diagnostic session.

15.5. memcached FAQ

Questions

  • 16.5.1: How does an event such as a crash of one of the memcached servers handled by the memcached client?

  • 16.5.2: Are there any, or are there any plans to introduce, a framework to hide the interaction of memcached from the application, i.e., within hibernate?

  • 16.5.3: What's a recommended hardware config for a memcached server? Linux or Windows?

  • 16.5.4: How expensive is it to establish a memcache connection? Should those connections be pooled?

  • 16.5.5: How will the data will be handled when the memcached server is down?

  • 16.5.6: Can memcached be run on a Windows environment?

  • 16.5.7: What is the max size of an object you can store in memcache and is that configurable?

  • 16.5.8: What are best practices for testing an implementation, to ensure that it is an improvement over the MySQL query cache, and to measure the impact of memcached configuration changes? And would you recommend keeping the configuration very simple to start?

  • 16.5.9: Can MySQL actually trigger/store the changed data to memcached?

  • 16.5.10: So the responsibility lies with the application to populate and get records from the database as opposed to being a transparent cache layer for the db?

  • 16.5.11: memcached is fast - is there any overhead in not using persistent connections? If persistent is always recommended, what are the downsides (e.g. locking up?)

  • 16.5.12: Is compression available?

  • 16.5.13: File socket support for memcached from the localhost use to the local memcached server?

  • 16.5.14: What are the advantages of using UDFs when the get/sets are manageable from within the client code rather than the db?

  • 16.5.15: Is memcached typically a better solution for improving speed than MySQL Cluster and\or MySQL Proxy?

  • 16.5.16: What speed trade offs is there between memcached vs MySQL Query Cache? Where you check memcached, and get data from MySQL and put it in memcached or just make a query and results are put into MySQL Query Cache.

  • 16.5.17: Does the -L flag automatically sense how much memory is being used by other memcached?

  • 16.5.18: Is the data inside of memcached secure?

  • 16.5.19: Can we implement different types of memcached as different nodes in the same server - so can there be deterministic and non deterministic in the same server?

  • 16.5.20: How easy is it to introduce memcached to an existing enterprise application instead of inclusion at project design?

  • 16.5.21: Can memcached work with ASPX?

  • 16.5.22: If I have an object larger then a MB, do I have to manually split it or can I configure memcached to handle larger objects?

  • 16.5.23: Is it true memcached will be much more effective with db-read-intensive applications than with db-write-intensive applications?

  • 16.5.24: How does memcached compare to nCache?

  • 16.5.25: Doing a direct telnet to the memcached port, is that just for that one machine, or does it magically apply across all nodes?

  • 16.5.26: Is memcached more effective for video and audio as opposed to textual read/writes

  • 16.5.27: We are caching XML by serialising using saveXML(), because PHP cannot serialise DOM objects; Some of the XML is variable and is modified per-request. Do you recommend caching then using XPath, or is it better to rebuild the DOM from separate node-groups?

  • 16.5.28: Do the memcache UDFs work under 5.1?

  • 16.5.29: How are auto-increment columns in the MySQL database coordinated across multiple instances of memcached?

  • 16.5.30: If you log a complex class (with methods that do calculation etc) will the get from Memcache re-create the class on the way out?

Questions and Answers

16.5.1: How does an event such as a crash of one of the memcached servers handled by the memcached client?

There is no automatic handling of this. If your client fails to get a response from a server then it should fall back to loading the data from the MySQL database.

The client APIs all provide the ability to add and remove memcached instances on the fly. If within your application you notice that memcached server is no longer responding, your can remove the server from the list of servers, and keys will automatically be redistributed to another memcached server in the list. If retaining the cache content on all your servers is important, make sure you use an API that supports a consistent hashing algorithm. For more information, see Section 15.2.5, “memcached Hash Types”.

16.5.2: Are there any, or are there any plans to introduce, a framework to hide the interaction of memcached from the application, i.e., within hibernate?

There are lots of projects working with memcached. There is a Google Code implementation of Hibernate and memcached working together. See http://code.google.com/p/hibernate-memcached/.

16.5.3: What's a recommended hardware config for a memcached server? Linux or Windows?

memcached is only available on Unix/Linux, so using a Windows machine is not an option. Outside of this, memcached has a very low processing overhead. All that is required is spare physical RAM capacity. The point is not that you should necessarily deploy a dedicated memcached server. If you have web, application, or database servers that have spare RAM capacity, then use them with memcached.

If you want to build and deploy a dedicated memcached servers, then you use a relatively low-power CPU, lots of RAM and one or more Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.

16.5.4: How expensive is it to establish a memcache connection? Should those connections be pooled?

Opening the connection is relatively inexpensive, because there is no security, authentication or other handshake taking place before you can start sending requests and getting results. Most APIs support a persistent connection to a memcached instance to reduce the latency. Connection pooling would depend on the API you are using, but if you are communicating directly over TCP/IP, then connection pooling would provide some small performance benefit.

16.5.5: How will the data will be handled when the memcached server is down?

The behavior is entirely application dependent. Most applications will fall back to loading the data from the database (just as if they were updating the memcached) information. If you are using multiple memcached servers, you may also want to remove a server from the list to prevent the missing server affecting performance. This is because the client will still attempt to communicate the memcached that corresponds to the key you are trying to load.

16.5.6: Can memcached be run on a Windows environment?

No. Currently memcached is available only on the Unix/Linux platform. There is an unofficial port available, see http://www.codeplex.com/memcachedproviders.

16.5.7: What is the max size of an object you can store in memcache and is that configurable?

The default maximum object size is 1MB. If you want to increase this size, you have to re-compile memcached. You can modify the value of the POWER_BLOCK within the slabs.c file within the source.

16.5.8: What are best practices for testing an implementation, to ensure that it is an improvement over the MySQL query cache, and to measure the impact of memcached configuration changes? And would you recommend keeping the configuration very simple to start?

The best way to test the performance is to start up a memcached instance. First, modify your application so that it stores the data just before the data is about to be used or displayed into memcached.Since the APIs handle the serialization of the data, it should just be a one line modification to your code. Then, modify the start of the process that would normally load that information from MySQL with the code that requests the data from memcached. If the data cannot be loaded from memcached, default to the MySQL process.

All of the changes required will probably amount to just a few lines of code. To get the best benefit, make sure you cache entire objects (for example, all the components of a web page, blog post, discussion thread, etc.), rather than using memcached as a simple cache of individuals rows of MySQL tables. You should see performance benefits almost immediately.

Keeping the configuration very simple at the start, or even over the long term, is very easy with memcached. Once you have the basic structure up and running, the only addition you may want to make is to add more servers into the list of servers used by your clients. You don't need to manage the memcached servers, and there is no complex configuration, just add more servers to the list and let the client API and the memcached servers make the decisions.

16.5.9: Can MySQL actually trigger/store the changed data to memcached?

Yes. You can use the MySQL UDFs for memcached and either write statements that directly set the values in the memcached server, or use triggers or stored procedures to do it for you. For more information, see Section 15.3.7, “Using the MySQL memcached UDFs”

16.5.10: So the responsibility lies with the application to populate and get records from the database as opposed to being a transparent cache layer for the db?

Yes. You load the data from the database and write it into the cache provided by memcached. Using memcached as a simple database row cache, however, is probably inefficient. The best way to use memcached is to load all of the information from the database relating to a particular object, and then cache the entire object. For example, in a blogging environment, you might load the blog, associated comments, categories and so on, and then cache all of the information relating to that blog post. The reading of the data from the database will require multiple SQL statements and probably multiple rows of data to complete, which is time consuming. Loading the entire blog post and the associated information from memcached is just one operation and doesn't involve using the disk or parsing the SQL statement.

16.5.11: memcached is fast - is there any overhead in not using persistent connections? If persistent is always recommended, what are the downsides (e.g. locking up?)

If you don't use persistent connections when communicating with memcached then there will be a small increase in the latency of opening the connection each time. The effect is comparable to use non-persistent connections with MySQL.

In general, the chance of locking or other issues with persistent connections is minimal, because there is very little locking within memcached. If there is a problem then eventually your request will timeout and return no result so your application will need to load from MySQL again.

16.5.12: Is compression available?

Yes. Most of the client APIs support some sort of compression, and some even allow you to specify the threshold at which a value is deemed appropriate for compression during storage.

16.5.13: File socket support for memcached from the localhost use to the local memcached server?

You can use the -s option to memcached to specify the location of a file socket. This automatically disables network support.

16.5.14: What are the advantages of using UDFs when the get/sets are manageable from within the client code rather than the db?

Sometimes you want to be able to be able to update the information within memcached based on a generic database activity, rather than relying on your client code. For example, you may want to update status or counter information in memcached through the use of a trigger or stored procedure. For some situations and applications the existing use of a stored procedure for some operations means that updating the value in memcached from the database is easier than separately loading and communicating that data to the client just so the client can talk to memcached.

In other situations, when you are using a number of different clients and different APIs, you don't want to have to write (and maintain) the code required to update memcached in all the environments. Instead, you do this from within the database and the client never gets involved.

16.5.15: Is memcached typically a better solution for improving speed than MySQL Cluster and\or MySQL Proxy?

Both MySQL Cluster and MySQL Proxy still require access to the underlying database to retrieve the information. This implies both a parsing overhead for the statement and, often, disk based access to retrieve the data you have selected.

The advantage of memcached is that you can store entire objects or groups of information that may require multiple SQL statements to obtain. Restoring the result of 20 SQL statements formatted into a structure that your application can use directly without requiring any additional processing is always going to be faster than building that structure by loading the rows from a database.

16.5.16: What speed trade offs is there between memcached vs MySQL Query Cache? Where you check memcached, and get data from MySQL and put it in memcached or just make a query and results are put into MySQL Query Cache.

In general, the time difference between getting data from the MySQL Query Cache and getting the exact same data from memcached is very small.

However, the benefit of memcached is that you can store any information, including the formatted and processed results of many queries into a single memcached key. Even if all the queries that you executed could be retrieved from the Query Cache without having to go to disk, you would still be running multiple queries (with network and other overhead) compared to just one for the memcached equivalent. If your application uses objects, or does any kind of processing on the information, with memcached you can store the post-processed version, so the data you load is immediately available to be used. With data loaded from the Query Cache, you would still have to do that processing.

In addition to these considerations, keep in mind that keeping data in the MySQL Query Cache is difficult as you have no control over the queries that are stored. This means that a slightly unusual query can temporarily clear a frequently used (and normally cached) query, reducing the effectiveness of your Query Cache. With memcached you can specify which objects are stored, when they are stored, and when they should be deleted giving you much more control over the information stored in the cache.

16.5.17: Does the -L flag automatically sense how much memory is being used by other memcached?

No. There is no communication or sharing of information between memcached instances.

16.5.18: Is the data inside of memcached secure?

No, there is no security required to access or update the information within a memcached instance, which means that anybody with access to the machine has the ability to read, view and potentially update the information. If you want to keep the data secure, you can encrypt and decrypt the information before storing it. If you want to restrict the users capable of connecting to the server, your only choice is to either disable network access, or use IPTables or similar to restrict access to the memcached ports to a select set of hosts.

16.5.19: Can we implement different types of memcached as different nodes in the same server - so can there be deterministic and non deterministic in the same server?

Yes. You can run multiple instances of memcached on a single server, and in your client configuration you choose the list of servers you want to use.

16.5.20: How easy is it to introduce memcached to an existing enterprise application instead of inclusion at project design?

In general, it is very easy. In many languages and environments the changes to the application will be just a few lines, first to attempt to read from the cache when loading data and then fall back to the old method, and to update the cache with information once the data has been read.

memcached is designed to be deployed very easily, and you shouldn't require significant architectural changes to your application to use memcached.

16.5.21: Can memcached work with ASPX?

There are ports and interfaces for many languages and environments. ASPX relies on an underlying language such as C# or VisualBasic, and if you are using ASP.NET then there is a C# memcached library. For more information, see .

16.5.22: If I have an object larger then a MB, do I have to manually split it or can I configure memcached to handle larger objects?

You would have to manually split it. memcached is very simple, you give it a key and some data, it tries to cache it in RAM. If you try to store more than the default maximum size, the value is just truncated for speed reasons.

16.5.23: Is it true memcached will be much more effective with db-read-intensive applications than with db-write-intensive applications?

Yes. memcached plays no role whatsoever in database writes, it is a method of caching data already read from the database in RAM.

16.5.24: How does memcached compare to nCache?

The main benefit of memcached is that is very easy to deploy and works with a wide range of languages and environments, including .NET, Java, Perl, Python, PHP, even MySQL. memcached is also very lightweight in terms of systems and requirements, and you can easily add as many or as few memcached servers as you need without changing the individual configuration. memcached does require additional modifications to the application to take advantage of functionality such as multiple memcached servers.

16.5.25: Doing a direct telnet to the memcached port, is that just for that one machine, or does it magically apply across all nodes?

Just one. There is no communication between different instances of memcached, even if each instance is running on the same machine.

16.5.26: Is memcached more effective for video and audio as opposed to textual read/writes

memcached doesn't care what information you are storing. To memcached, any value you store is just a stream of data. Remember, though, that the maximum size of an object you can store in memcached without modifying the source code is 1MB, so it's usability with audio and video content is probably significantly reduced. Also remember that memcached is a solution for caching information for reading. It shouldn't be used for writes, except when updating the information in the cache.

16.5.27: We are caching XML by serialising using saveXML(), because PHP cannot serialise DOM objects; Some of the XML is variable and is modified per-request. Do you recommend caching then using XPath, or is it better to rebuild the DOM from separate node-groups?

You would need to test your application using the different methods to determine this information. You may find that the default serialization within PHP may allow you to store DOM objects directly into the cache.

16.5.28: Do the memcache UDFs work under 5.1?

Yes.

16.5.29: How are auto-increment columns in the MySQL database coordinated across multiple instances of memcached?

They aren't. There is no relationship between MySQL and memcached unless your application (or, if you are using the MySQL UDFs for memcached, your database definition) creates one.

If you are storing information based on an auto-increment key into multiple instances of memcached then the information will only be stored on one of the memcached instances anyway. The client uses the key value to determine which memcached instance to store the information, it doesn't store the same information across all the instances, as that would be a waste of cache memory.

16.5.30: If you log a complex class (with methods that do calculation etc) will the get from Memcache re-create the class on the way out?

In general, yes. If the serialization method within the API/language that you are using supports it, then methods and other information will be stored and retrieved.