New Category Archiving Options Give Significant Speed Gains

In response to a recent thread on the mailing list, I was able to identify three key areas in the code that could be optimized for efficiency.

1. slow database acquisition (especially for categories)
2. slow acquirement of related categories for each entry
3. poor correlation of data loaded for category archives and entry templates

The following solutions were conjured up as a result:

1. created master database reference file which also stores related categories for each entry
2. configurable data loaded for category archives allows for better correlation with entry templates

Because of these changes, category archives can now be configured to acquire a minimal set of entry metadata reducing a significant amount of time wasted. Total time to process a full update of my weblog with a total of 87 entries and two categories was reduced by about three minutes!