get_record called in a loop in restore_dbops::prechek_precheck_qbanks_by_level

When testing MDL-40581, I the call graphs shows 8862 get_record_calls from the precheck function. As suggested in the description.

MDL-40581_MUC_restore_precheck_63902e2b918735b170b7b87252f7db25.png shows that case.

The result is to remove the loop and do a single call.

                                                    	Diff    	Diff%
Number of Function Calls   43,762,907 	42,697,004 	-1,065,903 	-2.4%
Incl. Wall Time (microsec) 820,491,422 	703,751,677 	-116,739,745 	-14.2%
Incl. CPU (microsecs)      384,832,051 	346,005,623 	-38,826,428 	-10.1%
Incl. MemUse (bytes)       89,776,112 	90,035,496 	259,384 	0.3%
Incl. PeakMemUse (bytes)   119,346,240 	131,472,080 	12,125,840 	10.2%

Performance run show a small memory increase and a 15% time increase.

This looks like an obvious performance win. Just one significant, and one minor, further improvement required:

1. You could do more work in the SQL:

// Collect all the questions for this category into memory so we only talk to the DB once.
$questioncache = $DB->get_records_sql_menu("
    SELECT " . $DB->sql_concat('stamp', "' '", 'version') . ", id
    FROM {question}
    WHERE category = ?", array($matchcat->id));

(That replaces 7 lines of your code.)

2. You don't need to unset($questioncache) at the end of the function. PHP uses reference-counting, and so will do that for you.

Thanks Tim for the education there, too much coding on 5.1.6 where that actually helped with garage collection. I've adjusted the patch accordingly. As expected, we don't have as much of a memory rise from this new patch. I'm not so convinced by the difference in runtime. It's faster overall due to less DB calls. However it seems runtime noise related to disk performance of the database.

I've not uploaded the final mpr file due to the tracker not allowing me. I'm resubmitting for peer review.

I am not sure if I should be back-patching these, any comment there would be appreciated.

+1 from me for that latest patch.

I will let you submit for integration. I don't know if you intend to back-port or not.

I have back-ported to 2.5 and 2.4. I'm ready for this to be submitted for integration. I can't do that.

OK. Submitting for integration.

Nice improvement, i've integrated that to master, 25 and 24 - thanks Russell.

Test passed. Restore works fine on 2.4, 2.5 and master.

Completely non related but I had some funny warnings about badges when trying to restore backup from 2.6 into moodle 2.4

Thanks again for another week of fixes, improvements and testing. These changes have been released to the world.

Cheers, Damyon