Multitiered Cache Management and Acceleration for Database-Driven Websites

Response time is a key differentiation point among electronic commerce (e-commerce) applications. For many e-commerce applications, web pages are created dynamically based on the current state of a business stored in database systems. To improve the response time, many e-commerce websites deploy caching solutions for acceleration of content delivery. There are multiple tiers in the content delivery infrastructure where cache servers can be deployed, including (1) data caching (in data centers), (2) content page caching (in edge or front end caches), and (3) database query result set caching (between application servers and DBMS). The architecture of database-driven e-commerce websites is more complex than that of typical websites. It requires the integration of web servers, application servers, and back end database systems as well as dynamic content caching solutions. In this paper, the issues associated with the management of content page caching and database query result set caching tiers are studied. It is observed that caching management for these two tiers have their unique characteristics. It is because cached object types and information available for the caching management in the two tiers are different. Solutions are proposed for effective caching management for each tier and extensive evaluations are conducted. The experimental results show the usefulness of the technology in improving overall system performance.