Microsoft IIS team released today the first beta of the Windows Cache extension for PHP (WinCache 1.0) for PHP 5.2 and 5.3. The new cache extension is a PHP accelerator that aims to increase PHP applications speed running on windows platform. The extension doesn’t require any code change, it just need to be enabled in IIS. WinCache have many directives that could be enabled/disabled in php.ini and six utility functions to return extension-specific information about the cache internals.

Joe Stagner, posted an introduction to the windows cache extension and pointed to some notes about compatibilities :

• The extension can only be used with non-thread-safe builds of PHP
• The extension can only be used when IIS is configured to run PHP via FastCGI
• The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 can only be used with the x86 VC9 build of PHP 5.3.

The Windows Cache Extension includes 3 different types of caches. The following describes the purpose of each cache type and the benefits it provides.