ENTERPRISE

Microsoft Enterprise Library : A Cache Advance for Your Applications - How Do I Configure the Caching Block?

10/22/2013 8:39:08 PM

1. What Does the Caching Block Do?

The Caching Application Block provides high-performance and scalable caching capabilities, and is both thread safe and exception safe. It caches data in memory, and optionally maintains a synchronized backing store that, by default, can be isolated storage or a database. It also provides a wide range of expiration features, including the use of multiple expiration settings for cached items (including both time-based and notification-based policies).

Even better, if the cache locations are not suitable for your requirements, or the caching mechanism doesn't do quite what you want in terms of storing or retrieving cache items, you can modify or extend it. For example, you can create your own custom expiration policies and backing store providers, and plug them in using the built-in extension points. This means that you can implement caching operations throughout your applications that you access from code using a single simple API.

On top of all that, the caches you implement are configurable at design time and run time, so that administrators can change the caching behavior as required both before and after deployment. Administrators can change the backing store that the caching mechanism uses, configure encryption of the cached contents, and change the scavenging behavior—all through configuration settings.

Flushed or Expired?

One of the main factors that can affect application performance is memory availability. While caching data can improve performance, caching too much data can (as you saw earlier) reduce performance if the cache uses too much of the available memory. To counter this, the Caching block performs scavenging on a fixed cycle in order remove items when memory is in short supply. Items may be removed from the cache in two ways:

  • When they expire. If you specify an expiration setting, the item is removed from the cache during the next scavenging cycle if they have expired. You can specify a combination of settings based on the absolute time, sliding time, extended time format (for example, every evening at midnight), file dependency, or never. You can also specify a priority, so that lower priority items are scavenged first. The scavenging interval and the maximum number of items to scavenge on each pass are configurable.

  • When they are flushed. You can explicitly expire (mark for removal) individual items in the cache, or explicitly expire all items, using methods exposed by the Caching block. This allows you to control which items are available from the cache. The scavenging mechanism removes items that it detects have expired and are no longer valid. However, until the scavenging cycle occurs, the items remain in the cache but are marked as expired, and you cannot retrieve them.

The difference is that flushing might remove valid cache items to make space for more frequently used items, whereas expiration removes invalid and expired items. Remember that items may have been removed from the cache by the scavenging mechanism even if they haven't expired, and you should always check that the cached item exists when you try to retrieve and use it. You may choose to recreate the item and re-cache it at this point.

Which Expiration Policy?

If you have data that is relatively volatile, is updated regularly, or is valid for only a specific time or interval, you can use a time-based expiration policy to ensure that items do not remain in the cache beyond their useful valid lifetime. You can specify how long an item should remain in the cache if not accessed (effectively the timer starts at zero again each time it is accessed), or specify the absolute time that it should be removed irrespective of whether it has been accessed in the meantime.

If the data you cache depends on changes to another resource, such as a disk file, you can improve caching efficiency by using a notification-based expiration policy. The Caching block contains an expiration provider that detects changes to disk files. You can create your own custom expiration policy providers that detect, for example, WMI events, database events, or business logic operations and invalidate the cached item when they occur.

2. How Do I Configure the Caching Block?

Like all of the Enterprise Library application blocks, you start by configuring your application to use the block To configure the Caching block, you add the Caching Settings section to the tool, which adds a default cache manager. The cache manager exposes the caching API and is responsible for manipulating the cached items. You can add more than one cache manager to the configuration if you want to implement multiple caches, or change the default cache manager for a custom one that you create. For example, you may decide to replace it with a custom or third party cache manager that supports distributed caching for a Web farm or application farm containing multiple servers.

You can see the four cache managers we use, with the section for the EncryptedCacheManager expanded to show its property settings.

Configuring caching in Enterprise Library

Figure 1. Configuring caching in Enterprise Library

For each cache manager, you can specify the expiration poll frequency (the interval in seconds at which the block will check for expired items and remove them), the maximum number of items in the cache before scavenging will occur irrespective of the polling frequency, and the number of items to remove when scavenging the cache.

You can also specify, in the configuration properties of the Caching Application Block root node, which of the cache managers you configure should be the default. The Caching block will use the one you specify if you instantiate a cache manager without providing the name of that cache manager.

Persistent Caching

The cache manager caches items in memory only. If you want to persist cached items across application and system restarts, you can add a persistent backing store to your configuration. You can specify only a single backing store for each cache manager (obviously, or it would get extremely confused), and the Caching block contains providers for caching in both a database and isolated storage. You can specify a partition name for each persistent backing store, which allows you to target multiple cache storage providers at isolated storage or at the same database.

If you add a data cache store to your configuration, the configuration tool automatically adds the Data Access Application Block to the configuration. You configure a database connection in the Data Access block configuration section, and then select this connection in the properties of the data cache store provider.

Encrypting Cached Items

You can add a provider that implements symmetric storage encryption to each persistent backing store you configure if you want to encrypt the stored items. This is a really good plan if you must store sensitive information. When you add a symmetric storage encryption provider to your configuration, the configuration tool automatically adds the Cryptography Application Block to the configuration.

You configure a symmetric cryptography provider in the Cryptography block configuration section. You can use the Windows Data Protection API (DPAPI) symmetric provider, or select from other providers such as AES, Triple DES, and Rijndael. F

Note

Note that the Caching Application Block does not encrypt data in the in-memory cache, even if you configure encryption for the associated backing store. If it is possible that a malicious user could access the application process's memory, do not store sensitive information, such as credit card numbers or passwords, in the cache.

And now, at last, you are ready to write code that uses the Caching block.

Initializing the Caching Block

When you create a project that uses the Caching block, you must edit the project and code to add references to the appropriate Enterprise Library assemblies and namespaces.

The assemblies you must add to your project  are:

  • Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.dll

  • Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.Cryptography.dll

  • Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.Database.dll

  • Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.dll

  • Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Security.Cryptography.dll

Note

If you do not wish to cache items in a database, you don't need to add the Database and Data assemblies. If you do not wish to encrypt cached items, you don't need to add the two Cryptography assemblies.

To make it easier to use the objects in the Caching block, you can add references to the relevant namespaces to your project. Then you are ready to write some code.

Other  
  •  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 : Data Parallelism - Unrolling Sequential Loops into Parallel Tasks (part 4) - Handling Exceptions
  •  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 : Data Parallelism - Unrolling Sequential Loops into Parallel Tasks (part 3) - Interrupting a Loop
  •  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 : Data Parallelism - Unrolling Sequential Loops into Parallel Tasks (part 2) - The Parallel For Loop
  •  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 : Data Parallelism - Unrolling Sequential Loops into Parallel Tasks (part 1)
  •  Programming Windows Services with Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 : Implementing the Worker Class, Creating the FileWorkerOptions Class
  •  Programming Windows Services with Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 : Extending the Threading Model
  •  Programming Windows Services with Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 : Writing a New Thread Method, Monitoring with Multiple Threads
  •  The HP Virtual Server Environment : Example nPartition Management Scenario (part 4) - Rebooting and Booting nPartitions
  •  The HP Virtual Server Environment : Example nPartition Management Scenario (part 3) - Creating a new nPartition
  •  The HP Virtual Server Environment : Example nPartition Management Scenario (part 2) - Viewing the Complex after Installing Hardware, Extending the Existing nPartition
  •  
    Video
    Top 10
    New App for Women ‘Remix’ Offers Fashion Advice & Style Tips
    SG50 Ferrari F12berlinetta : Prancing Horse for Lion City's 50th
    The latest Audi TT : New angles for TT
    Era of million-dollar luxury cars
    Game Review : Hearthstone - Blackrock Mountain
    Game Review : Battlefield Hardline
    Google Chromecast
    Keyboards for Apple iPad Air 2 (part 3) - Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad Air 2
    Keyboards for Apple iPad Air 2 (part 2) - Zagg Slim Book for iPad Air 2
    Keyboards for Apple iPad Air 2 (part 1) - Belkin Qode Ultimate Pro Keyboard Case for iPad Air 2
    REVIEW
    - First look: Apple Watch

    - 3 Tips for Maintaining Your Cell Phone Battery (part 1)

    - 3 Tips for Maintaining Your Cell Phone Battery (part 2)
    Popular Tags
    Video Tutorail Microsoft Access Microsoft Excel Microsoft OneNote Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft Project Microsoft Visio Microsoft Word Active Directory Exchange Server Sharepoint Sql Server Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2012 Windows 7 Windows 8 Adobe Flash Professional Dreamweaver Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop CorelDRAW X5 CorelDraw 10 windows Phone 7 windows Phone 8 Iphone