cache empties itself?

[Ricardo Newbery]

On Apr 4, 2008, at 2:04 PM, Michael S. Fischer wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 11:05 AM, Ricardo Newbery <ric at digitalmarbles.com 
> > wrote:
>
>> Again, "static" content isn't only the stuff that is served from
>> filesystems in the classic static web server scenario.  There are  
>> plenty of
>> "dynamic" applications that process content from database --  
>> applying skins
>> and compositing multiple elements into a single page while  
>> filtering every
>> element or otherwise applying special processing based on a user's  
>> access
>> privileges.  An example of this is a dynamic content management  
>> system like
>> Plone or Drupal.  In many cases, these "dynamic" responses are fairly
>> "static" for some period of time but there is still a definite  
>> performance
>> hit, especially under load.
>
> If that's truly the case, then your CMS should be caching the output  
> locally.


Should be?  Why?  If you can provide this capability via a separate  
process like Varnish, then why "should" your CMS do this instead?  Am  
I missing some moral dimension to this issue?  ;-)

In any case, both of these examples, Plone and Drupal, can indeed  
cache the output "locally" but that is still not as fast as placing a  
dedicated cache server in front.  It's almost always faster to have a  
dedicated single-purpose process do something instead of cranking up  
the hefty machinery for requests that can be adequately served by the  
lighter process.

Ric