23.1 About Caching

For most Web-based applications, a large percentage of requests are made for identical or similar content. These repeated requests for both dynamic and static contents place a significant strain on application infrastructure.

Caching stores all or parts of a web page in memory for use in future responses. It significantly reduces response time to client requests by reusing cached content for future requests without executing the code that created it.

Oracle ADF Faces Cache provides a simple way for you to cache portions of a response generated by a request. You simply wrap the fragment content you want to cache with a beginning <afc:cache> and ending </afc:cache> tag. By caching both dynamic and static content, you can increase throughput and shorten response times.

You can add the <afc:cache> tag to cache the following fragment types:

• Page fragment—You make the <afc:cache> tag a direct child of the <f:view> tag, and enclose the page's content within it.

• Fragment within a page—You enclose only the fragment portion within the <afc:cache> tag. Caching fragments is useful when sections of a page must be created for each request.

• Included fragment that exists in its own subpage—You make the <afc:cache> tag a direct child of the <f:subview> tag, and enclose the fragment's content within it.

You can use the ADF Faces Cache library with any application developed with JavaServer Faces (JSF).