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After searching around for months on and off I finally decided to post this up.

We have an ASP.NET MVC app that uses enterprise library to cache items. We also use a windows service that every so often updates those cached items. Problem is that when the windows service updates the cached items, the mvc website does not see the updated cached items until we reset IIS. We have thought about putting some code in the service to restart the IIS service but think there has got to be a better way. There seems to be one other post that talks about removing items from an external app, but it doesn't go far enough.

We think it has something to do with the in memory version that is local to each instance of the cache manager but simply cannot find a way to bring it all together.

casperOne
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MindWire
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    Entlib is explicitly NOT a distributed cache, and isn't designed for multiple users updating the cache. You need to use a distributed cache solution; nCache has a plug-in cache manager for their distributed cache that works with Entlib. – Chris Tavares Nov 30 '10 at 20:19
  • Thanks Chris... that explains the "wierdness" I was seeing here - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9822226/sharing-enterprise-library-database-cache-between-multiple-applications/9824587#9824587 – Eoin Campbell Mar 22 '12 at 15:51

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Well, that's pretty much it. The cache that is being used by the Enterprise Library is in-memory, and the ASP.NET and Windows Service applications both have different memory spaces. When you update the cache in one, you don't update the cache in the other.

The problem exists in the ASP.NET app as well, but it seems that this is a read-only cache, and you are performing the writes from the service.

What you need to do is create a cache that both app domains can share and there are many ways to do this:

  • Store the items in a shared persistance store (filesystem, database, etc) that both app domains can access easily
  • Have a cache service which will handle the updates of the cache items, but which you will query (through WCF, for example) for the cache items

In general, you are looking to perform "distributed caching". To that end, you should read the article in MSDN Magazine titled "Distributed Caching On The Path To Scalability" for more information on distributed caching options in .NET

casperOne
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  • Thanks for the answer. We didn't realize that Entlib is not a distributed cache as many articles talk about using EntLib cache vs Asp.net's cache if you want to access/update the cache from multiple apps.. Soooo Confuzed about the value on EntLib Cache?? – MindWire Nov 30 '10 at 22:05
  • Okie Dokie, we have moved our caching over to Membase. Looking good so far. Thanks everyone... Ps. Still Confused at the value EntLib caching provides! – MindWire Dec 01 '10 at 18:00
  • To be honest, it's not much anymore. In the Entlib 1.0 days, Entlib caching was necessary because ASP.NET cache was ONLY available in web apps, and people wanted caching for rich client apps as well. These days with just about everything being written on web servers and client apps an endangered species, it's not as much of a value-add. – Chris Tavares Dec 01 '10 at 19:02