IBM WebSphere: Deployment and Advanced Configuration

Planning for Caching

Caching is best done as a planned activity, not as something that is retrofitted on an existing application. The latter is quite possible but not as easy or fruitful. Obviously, the best candidates for caching are operations (or files) that are large, slow, or expensive to produce. They should also be public—the more users that can take advantage of a given cache entry, the better. Therefore, private data is not a good candidate for caching. Pages that have been “personalized” to include information specific to a particular user make poor candidates for caching, but there are ways around that if you have a good design. Consider an airline frequent flyer page that presents:

• The user's name, status, and point total in a welcome ...