(...)I'll warn you right now, this is going to be a long article. More than likely, I'll put a version of this up on the MySQL developer zone and PHP zone. This article is intended to highlight various basic topics concerning proper methods of handling connections to MySQL databases in PHP, guidelines for caching dynamic content, and a technique called "lazy loading". Hopefully by the end of the article you'll have learned how to combat a very widespread and potentially devastating scalability problem seen in an enormous number of PHP web applications.(...)
Source: http://jpipes.com/index.php?/archives/99-MySQL-Connection-Management-in-PHP-How-Not-To-Do-Things.html
