WCF Caching Strategy - Including Dependancies

Question

I would like to ask people's opinion on methods and strategies for introducing Caching to WCF. In particular what i am most interested in, is injected SQL Cache Dependencies. Once a web application is copied to multiple application servers I want to synchronize the cache efficiently.

I am currently looking at the WCF Rest Starter Kit which introduces a nice WebCache attribute for OperationContracts in which you can add SqlCacheDependancies.

I am just interested and would be greateful for, others take or experience in tackling this problem.

Kind Regards,

Andrew

Answer 1

Not sure which problem you're addressing, but you mention cache consistency across multiple servers. Having run a SqlCacheDependency configuration previously, here's my take on it.

The SqlCacheDependency incorporated with the WebCache attribute is the same cache dependency implementation that's been available since .Net 2.0. Overall, I find the aggregate configuration/operation/monitoring for SqlCacheDependency onerous. The design is acceptable for a single cache, but multiple systems -- no thanks.

I like separation of concerns. When working with multiple servers, I find a distributed cache tier much easier to manage than the SqlCacheDependency operation. Plenty of open-source and commercial distributed cache providers available. I find Memcache to be the most effective and operationally sound.