USER MANUALS

Using the Cache

You can enable the cache system (CACHE option) for a view by using the commands for modifying a base view (ALTER TABLE - section Query Capabilities: Search Methods and Wrappers) and modifying a view (ALTER VIEW - see section Modifying a Derived View). When it is enabled, the tuples obtained as a result of executing queries on the view will be stored in the cache.

Use the ALTER DATABASE command (see section Creating and Modifying Virtual DataPort Databases) to establish the default configuration of the cache for the views that belong to a certain database.

Note that if the cache is activated in a view, you can run periodic preloads of source data by executing a query that obtains the data that you want to preload.

Virtual DataPort has the following cache modes:

  • PARTIAL: when a query is executed against the view, the Server checks if the cache contains the data required to answer the query. If not, it queries the data source. This mode has additional clauses:

    • EXACT: with this type of cache, the cache stores the result of each query. Then, if the same query is executed and the entries of this query in cache have not expired (the TTL has not been reached), the data returned to the client is retrieved from the cache and not from the data source.

      Important

      The PARTIAL cache without the EXACT clause may not be appropriate for certain types of non-relational sources.

    • PRELOAD: the cached data has to be reloaded “manually” by executing a special query instead of being automatically reloaded by the Server.

  • FULL: when a view uses this cache mode, you have to explicitly preload the cache with a special query. Once it is preloaded, the data is always retrieved from the cache without checking if the query used to load the cache retrieved all the data from the source, or not. This means that the Server only retrieves data from the source while “preloading” data from the source.

    • INCREMENTAL: The incremental mode is a subtype of the full cache mode. With this mode enabled, the queries to this view are “incremental queries”. That is, the queries to this view merge the results obtained from the cache with the most recent data retrieved from the source. The main benefit of this mode is that the queries will always return fully up to date results without retrieving the full result set from the data source, just the rows that are added/changed since the last cache refresh.

The section Cache Modes of the Administration Guide explains in more detail how these cache modes work.

To disable the cache of a view, use the parameter CACHE OFF of the commands ALTER TABLE (for base views) or ALTER VIEW (for derived views).

If the cache is enabled (PARTIAL or FULL), set the value of the parameter TIMETOLIVEINCACHE. Its values can be:

  • The number of seconds after the data will expire.

  • DEFAULT. The time to live of the data is defined in the database that this view belongs to.

  • Or, NOEXPIRE. The data in the cache will never expire.

The “Cache maintenance task” removes the expired or invalid rows from the cache’s database.

The section Cache Maintenance Task of the administration guide explains in more detail what this task does.

The behavior of this thread is controlled by the parameters MAINTENANCE and MAINTAINERPERIOD:

  • If MAINTENANCE is OFF, the Server never spawns the “Cache maintenance” thread. With this option, the expired rows of the cache are never actually deleted from the database. However, as they are marked as expired, they are never returned as results of the query.

  • If MAINTENANCE is ON, the Server will spawn the “Cache maintenance” thread every MAINTAINERPERIOD seconds.

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