Core Auth Library

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]
[quote author="Circuitbomb" date="1250293136"]
Storing an email session side could limit the amount of calls to a database if the system has a heavy amount of traffic. Grabbing a session var would be faster than calling the database in most cases, and likely done with less code since to set the var in the first place would only really require one call with each session creation.
[/quote]

Sure, but this is the eternal trade-off - at one end you have the philosophy of dumping the entire database into an array.

My point was that the owner's email address is rarely used - at least in my experience. ID and login-name (or handle) are used in pretty much every view - again, in my experience.

And then there's this ...

As with what thody stated, I couldn't imagine a member system which did not require an email address.

If you can not imagine a system that allows for users without email addresses, then you should not be involved in the design of an abstracted authentication system.

Performance issues can always be tweaked in php.ini settings as well, if the developer has access to those configurations, and in some cases if they do not, within .htaccess.

I think this is an inconsiderate approach - putting performance considerations over to later-day operations staff, rather than sufficiently contemplating them during the design phase.