So I have this app, a Java servlet. It uses a dictionary object that reads words from a file specified as a constructor parameter on instantiation and then serves queries.
I can do basically the same on PHP, but it's my understanding the class will be instantiated on each and every request, and the file will be read again every time. In fact, I did it and it works, but it collapses my humble amazon EC2 micro instance at the ridiculous amount of 11 requests per second or more.
My question is: Shouldn't some kind of compiler/file system optimization be kicking in and making the performance impact insignificant when the file does not change at all?
If the answer is no, I guess my design is quite poor and I should try to improve it. In that case, my second question is: What would be the best approach to improve it?
Building a servlet-like service so the code is properly reused?
Using memcached to keep the words file content in memory?
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Using a RDBMS instead of a plain text file and have my dictionary querying it?
(despite the dictionary being only a few KB of static data and despite having to perform some complex queries such as selecting a (cryptographically safe) random word from those having a length higher than some per-request user setting and such?)
Something else?
