Skip controller cart if not nessecary / empty - is it possible?

[Scully]

We spent some time in optimizing the performance of our shop. We have a a mean access time of about 500 ms excluding the execution time of the cart controller. This controller takes about 2500 until response (appx. 2300 for waiting time and 200 ms for its exection). So we could say the cart controller takes way more than 50% of the overall loading time.

 

The question popped up if it would be possible to skip cart controller it cart is empty. Without further investigation we think the cart information must be stored on the clients cookies or session variables. If correct, we have the idea of implementing some new logic like this:

 

if ($cart-cookie exist or $cart is not NULL) {

   fire the cart controller

}

 

Any idea if this could work and if yes: where to look for changing the corresponding code?

 

Thanks for any help.

Scully.

running ps 1.5.6.