The title pretty much sums it up. Is there a difference between the shell file and php file for the Magento cron?
If there is a difference is there a reason to run one instead of the other?
Difference Between Shell and PHP Cron Files in Magento 1.9
cronmagento-1.9
Related Solutions
checkout_onepage_controller_success_action event fire whenever checkout/onepage/success page is rendered * ,other wise it does not fire*
And sales_order_place_after fire whenever we call Mage_Sales_Model_Order object's function place() called. And its call totally depends on payment mathods configuration*
From my point of view it will better to use checkout_onepage_controller_success_action ,use of after order payment ,you may be want to fire sms.
Well, the real question here is "what's the difference between load and using collections ?"
Using collections is a huge performance boost for the following reasons, especially for EAV entities:
Loading an entity attribute value (EAV) model requires several heavy queries to execute. As the number of executed queries is multiplied with the number of products, we get extremely inefficient and slow code.
When you use the load method you load every single attributes assigned to the entity.
Let's say you only need to know the value of one attribute of your entity, loading is definitely not the right way to go and should use some code like this:
$product = Mage::getResourceModel('catalog/product_collection')->addAttributeToSelect('my_attribute') ->addAttributeToFilter('entity_id', $productId) ->getFirstItem();
Worst case scenario is when you use the load method in a loop, it can result in a disaster in terms of performances:
I suggest you have a look at the following official guide: http://info2.magento.com/rs/magentosoftware/images/Conquer_the_5_Most_Common_Magento_Coding_Issues_to_Optimize_Your_Site_for_Performance.pdf
Best Answer
The cron.sh is pointing to the cron.php file, so you should be pointing your cronjob task to the .sh file.
Basically inside the PHP file resides all the logic for the cron to retrieve jobs from Magento and the sh file invokes the PHP file.