[ic] caching search results, academic discussion

Mike Heins interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Thu Jan 30 22:51:01 2003


Quoting Jeff Dafoe (jeff@badtz-maru.com):
> Hello,
> 
>     I have noticed that, on my system, most of the load is generated by
> product scans.  It seems to be the IO issue created when dozens of people
> hit the first page of the search results at once and the system has to scan
> the products and write the resultant match list out to the session
> directory.  I suspect it is the writing of the results that creates the
> highest load, as write operations are typically much slower than read
> operations.  When pondering this, I realized that all of my users are doing
> the same searches (via the category_vertical links) but each search is
> resulting in redundant scans and writes.  I think there may be some
> opportunity for caching here.  I am thinking it might be possible to create
> one copy of the results that were returned for a given search instead of
> each user having their own copy.  This global result list could be updated
> at certain intervals, much like the timed-build tag.
>     This is assuming I haven't missed some way to cache results page that
> currently exists, which is not impossible.

[timed-build ...] with an embedded search-region would be the way to
go.

	[timed-build file="timed/cat.[cgi name=cat filter=filesafe]" minutes=60]

	[search-region arg="
				sf=category
				se=[cgi cat]
			"]

	...

	[/search-region]
	[/timed-build]

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.513.523.7621      <mike@perusion.com>

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. -- Francis Bacon