A dynamic content caching solution for J2EE J2ECS (Java 2 enterprise caching system)

Abstract

The Internet has evolved from a static hypertext network, to a network of dynamic web based application. In aim of achieving a competitive edge, firms must provide their online customers with dynamic and personalized content, thereby only delivering what is relevant and enriching the user online experience. However, these requirements come at a cost. Dynamic pages consume several orders of magnitude more CPU time to generate. As the user load increases, the performance of the web application decreases, as the web server strives to execute the dynamic server side scripts, to serve each of the user requests. This phenomenon is known as re-reduced scalability and can be considered as the main reason for which many of today's organization avoid providing rich amounts of dynamic content. Many organizations attempt to achieve the required scalability, by investing in large amounts of processing power that sits idle at certain times, but fails to provide the required performance at peek times. Although different caching strategies have helped by improving performance at different network segments of the web, dynamic content caching was not considered until recently. Server Side Scripting Language technologies are relatively new and the independent nature of servers, application servers, databases and caches further helped in deeming dynamic content un-cacheable. During the past years, database and web application developers have turned back to the time honored caching method and developed a number of new techniques related to caching dynamic content. This dissertation uses existing techniques and adaptation of existing methods to provide dynamic content providers with a complete solution to design, develop and administer cache enabled dynamic web based applications. The main part of this dissertation is concerned with the implementation of a markup language in the form of a Tag Library, aimed at enabling greater levels of dynamic content caching, by caching fragments of dynamic pages. Upon the tag library sits a Developer IDE, which aids in caching applications in an easier and more effective way. The Tag Library uses a Generic Object Cache, to store and retrieve objects efficiently, using a variety of clearing algorithms and cache parameters to adapt to different situations. The Object Cache, in conjunction with the Tag Library, ensures that the cache is never stale. The cache provides it own API which supports caching for other types of applications and can be monitored via a Cache Administration Console GUI. The performance and scalability results achieved in this dissertation clearly demonstrate that dynamic content caching is a solution that should be considered by many organizations providing dynamic content to moderate and large audiences.