Tokyo Tyrant is the database server that uses Tokyo Cabinet as backend. It allows you to access the database remotely. It supports 3 protocols, binary, memcache and http. This is great if you have already existing infrastructure.

We needed a php class that implemented the protocol so we took a look at two of them, Net_TokyoTyrant with Pete Warden’s patch and Tyrant by Bertrand Mansion. The first one supports http and binary protocols, while Tyrant only supports the raw binary protocol.

During the first tests, Net_TokyoTyrant went crazy when inserting over 28000 records over http, so I guess there’s something wrong with that. When we switched to the binary protocol it worked as expected.

Here are some quick numbers:

Net_TokyoTyrant (100000 keys)

Time inserted: 50.3662779331 secs
Time retrieved: 57.7555668354 secs
Time deleted: 34.1996 secs

Tyrant (100000 keys)

Time inserted: 39.330272913 secs
Time retrieved: 44.3433589935 secs
Time deleted: 26.9360201359 secs

The former is slightly faster so I guess we’ll go for it. Specially important is that the author keeps it up to date, which is also a plus!

The Inkzee Team