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I have a couple of ActionMethods that returns content from the database that is not changing very often (eg.: a polygon list of available ZIP-Areas, returned as json; changes twice per year).

I know, there is the [OutputCache(...)] Attribute, but this has some disadvantages (a long time client-side caching is not good; if the server/iis/process gets restartet the server-side cache also stopps)

What i want is, that MVC stores the result in the file system, calculates the hash, and if the hash hasn't changed - it returns a HTTP Status Code 304 --> like it is done with images by default.

Does anybody know a solution for that?

Gerwald
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1 Answers1

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I think it's a bad idea to try to cache data on the file system because:

  1. It is not going to be much faster to read your data from file system than getting it from database, even if you have it already in the json format.
  2. You are going to add a lot of logic to calculate and compare the hash. Also to read data from a file. It means new bugs, more complexity.

If I were you I would keep it as simple as possible. Store you data in the Application container. Yes, you will have to reload it every time the application starts but it should not be a problem at all as application is not supposed to be restarted often. Also consider using some distributed cache like App Fabric if you have a web farm in order not to come up with different data in the Application containers on different servers.

And one more important note. Caching means really fast access and you can't achieve it with file system or database storage this is a memory storage you should consider.

Maksym Strukov
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  • My target is to get this specific call as fast as it would be, if we would store it on the file system. i think the file system is pretty fast when it is about web request. but database requests could be slow, especially in this case. I have measured and compared HTTP Requests from this specific site. the request with the Database call takes 400ms, the requests to a simple file takes about 20ms (both including Server Roundtrip etc.) – Gerwald Dec 21 '12 at 07:33
  • It's really hard to say why you have such a difference as I don't know the exact code you use, database structure and query. Probably you store you file on the web server side locally and your database is on some other machine, it's OK if you have one web server, but if you are going to have a web farm you will have to synchronize your data somehow. This is an important drawback from scalability perspective. Did you also include all logic you need to calculate hash and compare it? – Maksym Strukov Dec 21 '12 at 08:28
  • Definately. On a web farm it is a lot harder (but i am sure there would be a solution anyway) - eg. MVC is doing some similar thing with bundeling. But anyway - my project does not need to be prepared for a web farm. the database call is slow, because the sql query takes some time. – Gerwald Dec 21 '12 at 10:01