-> On Wed, Oct 02, 2002 at 10:01:24AM +0100, Mikhail Sobolev wrote:
-> > It looks like the publishers of static files use the same constructs:
-> >
-> >     f = open (filename)
-> >     return f.read ()
-> >
-> > I wonder how memory effective this is.  And if these are not memory
-> > effective what would be the best approach for serving big static files?
-> > (Maybe it would even require some sort of rewriting of HTTPResponse
-> > code?)


AOLserver and Apache both allow memory-mapping of files -- an OS-level
service, wherein a file is (you got it!) mapped into memory.  I'm
not sure what sort of performance gain it gives you for infrequently
served files, but presumably *some*...

See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_mmap_static.html for more
info on what Apache does.

If you're *really* interested in performance, I'd suggest just letting
the Web server handle requests for files...

cheers,
--titus