What to cache?

The data used by most web applications varies in its dynamicity, from completely static to always changing at every request. Everything that has some degree of stability can be cached. Prime candidates for caching range from the list data for stable dropdowns, user information, discrete and infrequently changing information, to stable search results that could be sorted in memory.

Since JCS is distributed and allows updates and invalidations to be broadcast to multiple listeners, frequently changing items can be easily cached and kept in sync through your data access layer. For data that must be 100% up to date, say an account balance prior to a transfer, the data should directly be retrieved from the database. If your application allows for the viewing and editing of data, the data for the view pages could be cached, but the edit pages should, in most cases, pull the data directly from the database.

How to cache discrete data

Let's say that you have an e-commerce book store. Each book has a related set of information that you must present to the user. Let's say that 70% of your hits during a particular day are for the same 1,000 popular items that you advertise on key pages of your site, but users are still actively browsing your catalog of over a million books. You cannot possibly cache your entire database, but you could dramatically decrease the load on your database by caching the 1,000 or so most popular items.

For the sake of simplicity let's ignore tie-ins and user-profile based suggestions (also good candidates for caching) and focus on the core of the book detail page.

A simple way to cache the core book information would be to create a value object for book data that contains the necessary information to build the display page. This value object could hold data from multiple related tables or book subtype table, but lets say that you have a simple table called BOOK that looks something like this:

  Table BOOK
  BOOK_ID_PK
  TITLE
  AUTHOR
  ISBN
  PRICE
  PUBLISH_DATE
        

We could create a value object for this table called BookVObj that has variables with the same names as the table columns that might look like this:

package com.genericbookstore.data;

import java.util.Date;

public class BookVObj implements Serializable
{
    public int bookId = 0;
    public String title;
    public String author;
    public String ISBN;
    public String price;
    public Date publishDate;

    public BookVObj()
    {
    }
}
        

Then we can create a manager called BookVObjManager to store and retrieve BookVObj's. All access to core book data should go through this class, including inserts and updates, to keep the caching simple. Let's make BookVObjManager a singleton that gets a JCS access object in initialization. The start of the class might look like:

package com.genericbookstore.data;

import org.apache.commons.jcs3.JCS;
import org.apache.commons.jcs3.access.CacheAccess;
// in case we want to set some special behavior
import org.apache.commons.jcs3.engine.behavior.IElementAttributes;

public class BookVObjManager
{
    private static BookVObjManager instance;
    private static int checkedOut = 0;
    private static CacheAccess<String, BookVObj> bookCache;

    private BookVObjManager()
    {
        try
        {
            bookCache = JCS.getInstance("bookCache");
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            // Handle cache region initialization failure
        }

        // Do other initialization that may be necessary, such as getting
        // references to any data access classes we may need to populate
        // value objects later
    }

    /**
     * Singleton access point to the manager.
     */
    public static BookVObjManager getInstance()
    {
        synchronized (BookVObjManager.class)
        {
            if (instance == null)
            {
                instance = new BookVObjManager();
            }
        }

        synchronized (instance)
        {
            instance.checkedOut++;
        }

        return instance;
    }
        

To get a BookVObj we will need some access methods in the manager. We should be able to get a non-cached version if necessary, say before allowing an administrator to edit the book data. The methods might look like:

    /**
     * Retrieves a BookVObj.  Default to look in the cache.
     */
    public BookVObj getBookVObj(int id)
    {
        return getBookVObj(id, true);
    }

    /**
     * Retrieves a BookVObj. Second argument decides whether to look
     * in the cache. Returns a new value object if one can't be
     * loaded from the database. Database cache synchronization is
     * handled by removing cache elements upon modification.
     */
    public BookVObj getBookVObj(int id, boolean fromCache)
    {
        BookVObj vObj = null;

        // If requested, attempt to load from cache
        if (fromCache)
        {
            vObj = bookCache.get("BookVObj" + id, () -> loadvObj(id));
        }
        else
        {
            // otherwise, load directly
            vObj = loadvObj(id);
        }

        return  vObj;
    }

    /**
     * Creates a BookVObj based on the id of the BOOK table.  Data
     * access could be direct JDBC, some or mapping tool, or an EJB.
     */
    public BookVObj loadBookVObj(int id)
    {
        BookVObj vObj = new BookVObj();

        vObj.bookID = id;

        try
        {
            boolean found = false;

            // load the data and set the rest of the fields
            // set found to true if it was found

            found = true;

            // cache the value object if found

            if (found)
            {
                // could use the defaults like this
                // bookCache.put( "BookVObj" + id, vObj );
                // or specify special characteristics

                // put to cache

                bookCache.put("BookVObj" + id, vObj);
            }

        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            // Handle failure putting object to cache
        }

        return vObj;
    }
        

We will also need a method to insert and update book data. To keep the caching in one place, this should be the primary way core book data is created. The method might look like:

    /**
     * Stores BookVObj's in database.  Clears old items and caches
     * new.
     */
    public int storeBookVObj(BookVObj vObj)
    {
        try
        {
            // since any cached data is no longer valid, we should
            // remove the item from the cache if it an update.

            if (vObj.bookID != 0)
            {
                bookCache.remove("BookVObj" + vObj.bookID);
            }

            // put the new object in the cache

            bookCache.put("BookVObj" + id, vObj);
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            // Handle failure removing object or putting object to cache.
        }
    }
}
        

As elements are placed in the cache via put, it is possible to specify custom attributes for those elements such as its maximum lifetime in the cache, whether or not it can be spooled to disk, etc. It is also possible (and easier) to define these attributes in the configuration file as demonstrated later. We now have the basic infrastructure for caching the book data.

Selecting the appropriate auxiliary caches

The first step in creating a cache region is to determine the makeup of the memory cache. For the book store example, I would create a region that could store a bit over the minimum number I want to have in memory, so the core items always readily available. I would set the maximum memory size to 1200. In addition, I might want to have all objects in this cache region expire after 7200 seconds. This can be configured in the element attributes on a default or per-region basis as illustrated in the configuration file below.

For most cache regions you will want to use a disk cache if the data takes over about .5 milliseconds to create. The indexed disk cache is the most efficient disk caching auxiliary, and for normal usage it is recommended.

The next step will be to select an appropriate distribution layer. If you have a back-end server running an appserver or scripts or are running multiple webserver VMs on one machine, you might want to use the centralized remote cache. The lateral cache would be fine, but since the lateral cache binds to a port, you'd have to configure each VM's lateral cache to listen to a different port on that machine.

If your environment is very flat, say a few load-balanced webservers and a database machine or one webserver with multiple VMs and a database machine, then the lateral cache will probably make more sense. The TCP lateral cache is recommended.

For the book store configuration I will set up a region for the bookCache that uses the LRU memory cache, the indexed disk auxiliary cache, and the remote cache. The configuration file might look like this:

# DEFAULT CACHE REGION

# sets the default aux value for any non configured caches
jcs.default=DC,RFailover
jcs.default.cacheattributes=
    org.apache.commons.jcs3.engine.CompositeCacheAttributes
jcs.default.cacheattributes.MaxObjects=1000
jcs.default.cacheattributes.MemoryCacheName=
    org.apache.commons.jcs3.engine.memory.lru.LRUMemoryCache
jcs.default.elementattributes.IsEternal=false
jcs.default.elementattributes.MaxLife=3600
jcs.default.elementattributes.IdleTime=1800
jcs.default.elementattributes.IsSpool=true
jcs.default.elementattributes.IsRemote=true
jcs.default.elementattributes.IsLateral=true


# CACHE REGIONS AVAILABLE

# Regions preconfigured for caching
jcs.region.bookCache=DC,RFailover
jcs.region.bookCache.cacheattributes=
    org.apache.commons.jcs3.engine.CompositeCacheAttributes
jcs.region.bookCache.cacheattributes.MaxObjects=1200
jcs.region.bookCache.cacheattributes.MemoryCacheName=
    org.apache.commons.jcs3.engine.memory.lru.LRUMemoryCache
jcs.region.bookCache.elementattributes.IsEternal=false
jcs.region.bookCache.elementattributes.MaxLife=7200
jcs.region.bookCache.elementattributes.IdleTime=1800
jcs.region.bookCache.elementattributes.IsSpool=true
jcs.region.bookCache.elementattributes.IsRemote=true
jcs.region.bookCache.elementattributes.IsLateral=true

# AUXILIARY CACHES AVAILABLE

# Primary Disk Cache -- faster than the rest because of memory key storage
jcs.auxiliary.DC=
    org.apache.commons.jcs3.auxiliary.disk.indexed.IndexedDiskCacheFactory
jcs.auxiliary.DC.attributes=
    org.apache.commons.jcs3.auxiliary.disk.indexed.IndexedDiskCacheAttributes
jcs.auxiliary.DC.attributes.DiskPath=/usr/opt/bookstore/raf
jcs.auxiliary.DC.attributes.MaxPurgatorySize=10000
jcs.auxiliary.DC.attributes.MaxKeySize=10000
jcs.auxiliary.DC.attributes.OptimizeAtRemoveCount=300000

# Remote RMI Cache set up to failover
jcs.auxiliary.RFailover=
    org.apache.commons.jcs3.auxiliary.remote.RemoteCacheFactory
jcs.auxiliary.RFailover.attributes=
    org.apache.commons.jcs3.auxiliary.remote.RemoteCacheAttributes
jcs.auxiliary.RFailover.attributes.RemoteTypeName=LOCAL
jcs.auxiliary.RFailover.attributes.FailoverServers=scriptserver:1102
jcs.auxiliary.RFailover.attributes.GetOnly=false
        

I've set up the default cache settings in the above file to approximate the bookCache settings. Other non-preconfigured cache regions will use the default settings. You only have to configure the auxiliary caches once. For most caches you will not need to pre-configure your regions unless the size of the elements varies radically. We could easily put several hundred thousand BookVObj's in memory. The 1200 limit was very conservative and would be more appropriate for a large data structure.

To get running with the book store example, I will also need to start up the remote cache server on the scriptserver machine. The remote cache documentation describes the configuration.

I now have a basic caching system implemented for my book data. Performance should improve immediately.