Client-side caching of pages with changing content

• US 20030182357A1
• Filed: 03/01/2002
• Published: 09/25/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 03/01/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NetSuite Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: NetSuite Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Goldberg, Evan, Chess, Brian, Bailey, William Ellery
• Granted Patent: US 7,970,816 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9574 of access to content, e.g. by caching

Abstract

The present invention relates to Internet based and web applications and the need to reduce page latency and bandwidth usage. The invention can achieve these goals by making use of the cache built in to standard web browsers. In one embodiment, the invention provides that a web application user will use their browser to request a page from the application web server, which responds with a small page that includes a script. The script appends a previously established cookie value to the URL originally requested and the browser then re-requests the URL with the appended cookie value. (The server computes the cookie value based on the last modified time of the data used to generate the page.) If the most recent version of the page is in the browser cache, the browser gets a cache hit, which means the page is retrieved from browser cache rather than from the server, rapidly displaying the page to the user. If, on the other hand, there is only an older version of the page in the browser cache, there is a cache miss (because the rewritten URL will not match any URL in the cache) and the browser will send the request to the server to retrieve the most recent version of the page.

Claims

1. A client-side caching system, comprising:

a client for issuing a request based on user selection for a resource on a server; and

a server for sending a response including a cookie and script, wherein the cookie value represents the last version of the resource, and the script appends the cookie to the request for a resource and the client automatically requests the resource with the appended cookie value so that if the most recent version of the resource is in the client cache, the resource is retrieved from client cache rather than from the server, and if not, is retrieved from the server.

2. The client-side caching system of claim 1, wherein the resource is a web page, the resource is located at a URL, and the client is a web browser with a browser cache.

3. The client-side caching system of claim 1, wherein the response includes a non-displayed relatively small page and the cookie is in a response header and the script is in the entity body of the response.

4. The client-side caching system of claim 1, wherein the script that appends the cookie to the request is embedded in a displayed page.

6. The server of claim 3, wherein the server includes a web server for listening to requests, the resource is a web page, and an application server for creating the cookie and inserting the cookie into response header and inserting the script into the entity body of the response.

5. A server for a client-side caching system, comprising:

a server for receiving a client request for a resource, updating a database, creating and inserting a cookie and a script in a response, wherein the cookie value represents the last version of the resource, the script appends the cookie value to the request for a resource such that the client automatically re-requests the resource with the appended cookie value so that if the most recent version of the resource is in the client cache, the resource is retrieved from client cache rather than from the server, and if not, the resource is retrieved from the server.

7. A server-side caching system, comprising:

a server programmed for receiving client requests, updating a database, and generating a response and determining a cookie value for cache control, wherein the server sets the cookie value by determining the last modified time of each page in the same class as the page which is the subject of the request, and sets the cookie value to the maximum value of the last modified times.