Setting up and configuring caching in the test environment
This section describes the two basic types of caching content, static and dynamic.
- Static content
- This content does not change over long periods of time. The content
type can be HTML, JSP rendering less dynamic data, GIF, JPG, or others.
Static content is characterized by content that is not generated dynamically
and has predictable expiration values.
Static content typically resides on the file system of the Web server or application server and is served unchanged to the client. To a large extent, this content can be declared to be cacheable. This type of content is typically cached at a caching proxy. See Figure 1.
- Dynamic content
- This content includes frequently updated content
(such as exchange rates), as well as personalized and customized content.
Although it is changing content, at the same time it must be stable
over a long enough period of time for meaningful reuse to occur. However,
if some content is very frequently accessed, such as requests for
pricing information of a popular stock, even a short period of stability
may be long enough to benefit from caching.
Dynamic content is typically cached in the dynamic cache services of the application server or the ESI cache of the Web server plug-in (note that these tests did not use ESI caching). See Figure 1.