MidCOM is the PHP-level framework of Midgard CMS. With its nearly 500K lines of code, it every now and then is good to sit down and focus on performance optimization.

• In 2004 MidCOM code moved from database to file system for both performance and ease-of-development reasons, though later the performance point has been disputed by Alexander's tests that revealed 10% speed advantage for loading code from DB.
• In 2005 we stopped using the shared "MidCOM site template" in favor of faster, static MidCOM start-up for websites.
• In 2006 I removed lots of query duplication with navigation and ACLs, with quite dramatic speed improvements on big sites.

MidCOM has again gathered some heft, and so this year we have to do more:

Lots of MidCOM code is still from the old Midgard 1.x API and PHP4 times. In MidCOM 3 we can build everything around modern Midgard API and PHP 5.2, which will make performance a lot easier. Some of the focus areas will be:

• Removing duplicate queries
• Rewriting the Navigation Access Point system with performance in mind
• Loading less and faster javascript
• Utilizing memcached where it makes sense
• Loading only the PHP code we actually need

I have created bug #102 for keeping track of all performance-related commits originating from the sprint.

To make all of this happen, a group of Midgard hackers will gather on August 30th to Ingels in the Finnish countryside. Anybody interested is welcome to join us either on-site or over IRC. Obviously some PHP5 hacking skills will be required :-)

Everybody attending the sprint will get a cool Midgard t-shirt designed by Andreas Nilsson.

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