This article assumes that you have installed PHP, that your web server is properly configured to serve PHP pages and that you've installed the Membase server on your development machine. We'll be accessing the Membase server as part of this tutorial. The server can be part of a cluster or can be stand-alone. Even if you're accessing a Membase server on a different machine, the Memcached PHP library on the development server is essentially a wrapper around the libmemcached library which is provided in the Membase install. (http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.memcached.php).

Please refer to the introductory article for information on how to download and install the Membase library and configuring PHP.

SQL databases and key-value stores such as Membase are general solutions to the web development problem of maintaining applications state across multiple systems and over time; as such they are similar, but there are many important differences. Most PHP developers are familiar with SQL databases, so the emphasis on the Membase implementation will be on how it differs from using SQL.