[UPHPU] Freeing database resources

[Wesley Jordan]

I've seen problems when using persistent connections to MySQL.  The garbage collector seems to ignore those and you sometimes have to kill the processes manually if you don't close the connection in your script.  But for non-persistent connections I've never had problems by not explicitly closing the connection.

-wes


-----Original Message-----
From: uphpu-bounces at uphpu.org [mailto:uphpu-bounces at uphpu.org] On Behalf Of thebigdog
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 10:20 AM
To: Rusty Keele
Cc: UPHPU
Subject: Re: [UPHPU] Freeing database resources

> I very rarely free up my resources when using PHP to interact with a MySQL
> database.  I figure that the garbage collector will do an adequate job.  In
> fact the PHP manual says: "Thanks to the reference-counting system introduced
> with PHP 4's Zend Engine, a resource with no more references to it is
> detected automatically, and it is freed by the garbage collector."
> 
> However, I notice that in the same PHP manual they always free up their
> resources in the examples they give!  Why do they do that if the resources
> are garbage collected?  Perhaps they are just being careful coders and
> demonstrating best practices.  Anyway, I am wondering if anybody has ever had
> problems by NOT freeing up MySQL resources - you know, by not calling
> mysql_close() or mysql_free_result().
> 
> Also, I mostly use the MySQL Improved Extension (mysqli_x) functions and
> methods, and I assume they work the same way by automatically garbage
> collecting unfreed resources, but I'm not 100% sure.  Does anybody know?

I always free up resources. just because the engine can do it doesn't mean that 
their might be issue or problems that arise. I have always been in the habit of 
cleaning up after i do things cause you never know when their might be issues 
with resources.

--
thebigdog

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