Home
1.3.1 Plan for caching early in the design phase
Caching is best done as a planned activity, not as something that is retro-fitted into an existing application. You do not want to be faced with having to make an inflexible, sluggish system perform better.
In the worst cases, we have seen newly developed systems that are not only frustratingly slow but start to disintegrate when placed under anything approaching projected production system loads. When this happens, it can then become a major exercise to change the application in order to remedy the problems.
Be certain to spend sufficient time analyzing the performance requirements in the early stages of development. This will help you to meet the project deadline with the delivery of a well performing system, not just a functioning system, and will ensure that you create a Web site that satisfies your end users.
The best candidates for caching are operations that are large, slow, or resource-intensive to produce. When evaluating potential caching candidates, make sure that they are publicly accessible. The more users that can take advantage of a given cache entry the better. Obviously, do not cache pages that are never reused.
Make sure developers and testers know the service level requirements of the Web pages they are designing and testing. Have them consider caching aspects at the outset, rather than retro-fitting caching considerations later in the project.