Periodic cache replacement policy for dynamic content at application server

I. Robert Chiang, Paulo B. Goes, Zhongju Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Web caching has been widely adopted to improve server responsiveness without resorting to costly infrastructure overhauls. However, due to the need to support real-time transactions and content customization, an increasing proportion of web pages contain fragments that are dynamically generated, typically results of database queries, rendering whole-page caching at browser or proxy level inappropriate. A promising approach has been to place dynamic fragments in a web application server cache for multiple web requests. In this paper, we propose a periodic cache replacement policy for dynamic web content at application server. Since the content of a dynamically generated web fragment could become stale, the value of a cached copy of the fragment will likely decrease as updates accumulate at the back-end database. Constantly replacing the cached copy of the fragment will increase its freshness and value, yet will also incur a high cache replacement cost. In addition, not all fragments are equally important to various applications and it is preferable to cache mission-critical fragments. The decision problem then consists of what fragments should be selected to cache and how frequently the cache should be replaced so that the total cache benefits per unit time is maximized. Numerical and simulation experiments show that the periodic cache replacement policy is robust and effective in handling dynamic content.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)336-348
Number of pages13
JournalDecision Support Systems
Volume43
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2007
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Cache invalidation
  • Dynamic web contents
  • Knapsack problem
  • Server-side caching

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Management Information Systems
  • Information Systems
  • Developmental and Educational Psychology
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Information Systems and Management

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