Cache Tables: Paving the Way for an Adaptive Database Cache

摘要

We introduce a new database object called Cache Table that enables persistent caching of the full or partial content of a remote database table. The content of a cache table is either defined declaratively and populated in advance at setup time, or determined dynamically and populated on demand at query execution time. Dynamic cache tables exploit the characteristics of typical transactional web applications with a high volume of short transactions, simple equality predicates, and 3-4 way joins. Based on federated query processing capabilities, we developed a set of new technologies for database caching: cache tables, "Janus" (two-headed) query execution plans, cache constraints, and asynchronous cache population methods. Our solution supports transparent caching both at the edge of content-delivery networks and in the middle-tier of an enterprise application infrastructure, improving the response time, throughput and scalability of transactional web applications.