The information below contains information specific to PHP. For further guidance, review the documentation.
PHP 7.3.*, PHP 5.6.* and HHVM 3.30.
Caching the output of the PHP bytecode compiler is expressly allowed by this benchmark. As we use PHP 5.5, which comes with opcache built in, we recommend you use this. However, some frameworks utilize APC instead as switching can be problematic (e.g. APC allows arbitrary data caching, while opcache does not).
Caching the output of parsing your configuration files is also expressly allowed (e.g. file caching, metadata caching). Some frameworks use APCu or memcached to achieve this.
Caching of the classloader (often referred to as optimizing the classloader) is also allowed. Most frameworks have their own methods of doing this.
Caching of any data fetched from the database is not allowed. Specifically, things such as Doctrine's Result Cache are inadmissible.
However, if you are using an ORM that prepares SQL statements in some way, such as how Doctrine translates DQL into SQL, this translated form can be cached, as long as you are dynamically accepting query parameters.
Caching any data using databases (Redis, MongoDB, etc)
is discouraged, as 1) our databases run on a separate
computer across the network, so you won't see much
benefit 2) your usage of the DB may impact other
framework's tests, which we cannot allow. You may launch
a DB locally on the application server as part of your
setup.sh scripts and utilize it for caching the allowable
cache items, if you so desire, but it's normally much
easier to use systems such as APCu.
Ask if you are not certain.
Many PHP apps use Composer for dependency management, which greatly simplifies downloading the framework, loading the framework, and upgrading the framework version in the future.
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