Caching

Sybase Data Federation uses caching to insulate production data sources from haphazard access, to maintain good performance for users and applications, to refresh data in a granular way based on business needs, and to ensure maximum data availability.

Caching makes remote data access practical by limiting the number of times a data request requires immediate communication with the original data source. Data Federation provides a variety of different caching options and features to meet diverse performance requirements. You can specify a different caching strategy for each data item, and use local and remote caching options separately or in combination to accomplish your goals.

Local caching enables caching of frequently requested results near the data source to reduce load on the back-end data source.
Remote caching (which is remote from the data source) caches data close to the users or applications that will use it. This cuts down on network congestion and dramatically improves application performance, because remote data calls are eliminated. You can prepopulate and update caches during off hours when network load is low, and establish cache configurations that ensure high availability when a network is congested or unavailable.

You can specify cache update frequency for a given data item. Database administrators can schedule how often database operations should be re-run and cached, so as to protect production databases from unexpected load. You can also set cached data to expire after a set time period, which forces a refresh of the data on the next request.

The Data Federation caching mechanism is efficient and simple to deploy:

It provides one solution for multiple datatypes, including multiple heterogeneous database management systems, files, XML documents, and application data
No additional database licenses are needed
No special hardware or network infrastructure is needed
No application changes are needed to take advantage of the cache

An automated caching approach means fewer data stores to manage. Caches are updated automatically in accordance with your specifications, and the process is completely transparent to users and applications.

For more information on caching in Data Federation, see the Data Federation Provisioning and Advanced Data Integration Guide, part of the DI Suite documentation set, which is available on the Sybase Product Manuals Web site at http://sybooks.sybase.com.