Systems and methods for adjusting caching policies for web service requests

• US 20040267906A1
• Filed: 06/26/2003
• Published: 12/30/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Truty, Gregory Louis
• Granted Patent: US 7,093,073 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9574 of access to content, e.g. by caching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/56 Provisioning of proxy services store-and-forward switching systems in data switching networks H04L12/54
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5682 Policies or rules for updating, deleting or replacing the stored data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A mechanism for caching Web services requests and responses, including testing an incoming request against the cached requests and associated responses is provided. The requests are selectively tested against the cached data in accordance with a set of policies. If a request selected hits in the cache, the response is served up from the cache. Otherwise, the request is passed to the corresponding Web-services server/application. Additionally, a set of predetermined cache specifications for generating request identifiers may be provided. The identifier specification may be autonomically adjusted by determining cache hit/cache miss ratios over the set of identifier specifications and over a set of sample requests. The set of specifications may then be sorted to reflect the performance of the respective cache specification algorithms for the current mix of requests.

Claims

1. A computer program product embodied in a tangible storage medium, the program product including programming instructions for:

sampling received Web requests using a predetermined policy;

generating a cache identifier from information in sampled Web requests using a cache identifier specification;

if said cache identifier hits in a request cache, incrementing a first counter; and

if said cache identifier does not hit in said request cache, incrementing a second counter.

2. The computer program product of claim 1 further comprising programming instructions for:

serving a cached response if said cache identifier hits in said request cache; and

passing said request to a Web request server if said cache identifier does not hit in said request cache.

3. The computer program product of claim 1 wherein said predetermined policy comprises a member of a set of request sampling policies, and wherein each policy of said set of request sampling policies is selectable in response to statistical characteristics of said Web requests.

4. The computer program product of claim 1 wherein said cache identifier specification comprises a member of a predetermined set of cache identifier specifications, and wherein each member of said set of cache identifier specifications is selectable in response to a performance measure derived from values in said first and second counters.

5. The computer program product of claim 4 further comprising programming instructions for sorting said set of cache identifier specifications in accordance with corresponding values of said performance measure.

6. The program product of claim 4 further comprising programming instructions for accumulating a statistical sample for each member of said set of cache identifier specifications, and wherein said value of said measure of performance comprises a ratio of cache hits to cache misses accumulated over said statistical sample.

7. The program product of claim 1 wherein said predetermined policy comprises one of a central processing unit (CPU) availability policy, every nth request policy, random selection policy and time-based policy.

8. A method for Web request caching operations comprising:

sampling received Web requests using a predetermined policy;

generating a cache identifier from information in sampled Web requests using a cache identifier specification;

if said cache identifier hits in a request cache, incrementing a first counter; and

if said cache identifier does not hit in said request cache, incrementing a second counter.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

serving a cached response if said cache identifier hits in said request cache; and

passing said request to a Web request server if said cache identifier does not hit in said request cache.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein said predetermined policy comprises a member of a set of request sampling policies, and wherein each policy of said set of request sampling policies is selectable in response to statistical characteristics of said Web requests.

11. The method of claim 8 wherein said cache identifier specification comprises a member of a predetermined set of cache identifier specifications, and wherein each member of said set of cache identifier specifications is selectable in response to a performance measure derived from values in said first and second counters.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising sorting said set of cache identifier specifications in accordance with corresponding values of said performance measure.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising accumulating a statistical sample for each member of said set of cache identifier specifications, and wherein said value of said measure of performance comprises a ratio of cache hits to cache misses accumulated over said statistical sample.

14. The method of claim 8 wherein said predetermined policy comprises one of a central processing unit (CPU) availability policy, every nth request policy, random selection policy and time-based policy.

15. A data processing system for Web request caching operations comprising:

circuitry operable for sampling received Web requests using a predetermined policy;

circuitry operable for generating a cache identifier from information in sampled Web requests using a predetermined policy;

circuitry operable for, if said cache identifier hits in a request cache, incrementing a first counter; and

circuitry operable for, if said cache identifier does not hit in said request cache, incrementing a second counter.

16. The data processing system of claim 15 further comprising:

circuitry operable for serving a cached response if said cache identifier hits in said request cache; and

circuitry operable for passing said request to a Web request server if said cache identifier does not hit in said request cache.

17. The data processing system of claim 15 wherein said predetermined policy comprises a member of a set of request sampling policies, and wherein each policy of said set of request sampling policies is selectable in response to statistical characteristics of said Web requests.

18. The data processing system of claim 15 wherein said cache identifier specification comprises a member of a predetermined set of cache identifier specifications, and wherein each member of said set of cache identifier specifications is selectable in response to a performance measure derived from values in said first and second counters.

19. The data processing system of claim 18 further comprising circuitry operable for sorting said set of cache identifier specifications in accordance with corresponding values of said performance measure.

20. The data processing system of claim 18 further comprising circuitry operable for accumulating a statistical sample for each member of said set of cache identifier specifications, and wherein said value of said measure of performance comprises a ratio of cache hits to cache misses accumulated over said statistical sample.