PECL memcache extension

[BUSTARRET, Jean-Francois]

> > Of course, all of this depends on how much of a problem it 
> is when you 
> > get stale data.  I guess in any situation where it _really_ 
> matters, you 
> > shouldn't be using memcached in the first place, but something more 
> > persistent / less error prone such as db transactions.
> 
> I have been thinking the same thing through all this.  It sounds like 
> people are putting data into memcached that is mission critical.  I 
> would never put that in memcached.  I would push that data to 
> redundant storage so that all copies were updated properly.

You also have to balance the cost of securing the storage with the cost
of loosing one piece of data.

Because of the cost of having a (for example) redundant DB that can
handle hundreds of updates a second (in the same table) and the cost of
having a guy that can figure how to use a DB properly to do it, it is
very tempting to use memcache (with a very good performance/cost ratio)
to store "important" data (data that has a value, but not a very high
one).

As for really mission-critical data (banking, life-saving), I totally
agree.