USER MANUALS

Partial Mode

When the Partial mode is enabled, the cache only stores some of the tuples of the view, unlike in the Full cache mode where all the data of the view is meant to be cached.

At runtime, when a user queries a view with this cache mode, the Server checks if the cache contains the data required to answer the query. If it does not have this data, the Server queries the data source.

When the Time to live (TTL) of the data is reached, the cache invalidates the cached data of the view so the next query will hit the data source.

This mode has the following options:

  • Explicit loads

  • Match exact queries only

Explicit Loads

If this option is selected, the cache has to be loaded explicitly.

When this option is not selected, the response of a query to this view is stored in the cache automatically.

When you select this option, you have to add the parameter 'cache_preload' = 'true' to the CONTEXT clause of the query, so the result is stored in the cache. Otherwise, the Server will retrieve the data from the data source.

For example:

  • A user sets the cache of the view V to Partial and selects Explicit loads.

  • The user executes the query SELECT * FROM V twice. In both executions, the data is obtained from the data source because the cache of the view has not been loaded explicitly.

  • The user executes the query

    SELECT *
FROM V
CONTEXT('cache_preload' = 'true')

  • The user executes the query SELECT * FROM V. Now the Server obtains the data from the cache.

  • After TTL (Time to Live) seconds of executing the query, the Server marks the cached data as invalid. Afterward, if a user queries this view, the data will be retrieved from the source until the cache of this view is loaded again.

The section Recommended Parameters for Queries that Load the Cache lists the recommended parameters of a cache preload query.

Match Exact Queries Only

If this option is selected, 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.

When this option is not selected, the cache module tries to solve the queries with the data present in the cache, even if the query has not been executed previously.

Let us see an example of what happens you enable or disable this option:

  • A user sets the cache of the view V to Partial.

  • The user executes the query SELECT * FROM V. The result of this query is retrieved from the data source and stored in the cache.

  • If Match queries only was selected when enabling the cache:

    • The user executes the same query again. In this case, the result is retrieved from the cache instead of from the data source.

    • The user executes the query SELECT * FROM V where field1 = 1.0. In this case, the Server retrieves the data from the data source and not from the cache. Although the view involved is the same as in the previous step, the condition is different. Therefore, the content of the cache is not used.

  • If Match queries only was not selected:

    • The user executes the query SELECT * FROM V WHERE field1 = a. The cache module detects that the result of this query is a subset of the first query that is already stored in cache. Therefore, it does not need to access the source to return the result. Note that if the option “Match queries only” was selected, the Server would access the data source to retrieve the result of the query because the queries are different.

  • After TTL (Time to Live) seconds of having executed the query SELECT * FROM V, the Server marks the cache of this query as invalid. Afterward, if a user executes the same query again, the cache module will find that the entries in the cache for this query are invalid. Thus, the Server will retrieve the data from the data source and not from the cache.

Important

The “Match queries only” option should be selected when caching data from certain types of non-relational sources. For example, select this check box when caching data from a view that obtains data from a REST API that only returns the first 100 results of a query. In this scenario, the result of the query

SELECT *
FROM V
WHERE field1 = a and field2 = b

may not be a subset of the result of

SELECT *
FROM V
WHERE field1 = 1
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