title: Store a large PHP array, plain php, or gzipped serialized data?
body: <p>I have a static large array-of-arrays, witch represents tree structure with about ~100k nodes, this array is only read-only reference for value lockups.</p>
  
  <p>Now, witch of this methods will perform better?</p>
  
  <p>First, simply array definition in pure PHP file, for including in requests</p>
  
  <p>Second, serialize this array, gzip serialized output, and load gzipped file and unserialize for every request</p>
  
  <p>Or convert array to SQLite or somethin' similar, but storage must be capable of fast lockup of long "ID path" ie. 1->5556->123->45->455->Node_name (With actually PHP table doing very good)</p>
  
  <p>Memory limit on server is not a problem</p>