Implementing Homepage Caching

In a PeopleSoft portal, a homepage is a combination of portal content elements that are assembled by the portal and delivered as a single HTML page, which is cached on each user’s browser.

Based on the configuration that you specify, the portal enables or disables homepage caching by using the homepage's HTTP header. If caching is enabled, the header also conveys the time interval before the web server is accessed again to get a fresh homepage. The browser does not access the web server after it initially receives the homepage until the specified interval elapses. You can also specify whether a particular browser model and version should use or ignore the caching information in the header.

In any case, if a user clicks the browser’s Refresh button, the homepage is accessed from the web server again, overwriting the homepage that is cached on the browser and restarting the interval counter. If any of the content is cached on the web server, the browser is refreshed from the server cache.

Enabling Homepage Caching

Important:

Caching applies to classic homepages and pagelets only, and not to fluid homepages.

You enable homepage caching for a site by selecting the Cache Homepage check box in the On the Browser group box of the Web Profile Configuration - Caching page. When this check box is selected (the default value), two related page elements become editable:

• Homepage Stale Interval.

• Browsers.

When the Cache Homepage check box is selected, the following occurs:

• All non-component-based pagelets will be cached on the browser by default unless the pagelet has a PORTAL_NOBROWSERCACHE content reference attribute set to Y.

• Component-based pagelets will not be cached on the browser by default unless the pagelet has a PORTAL_NOBROWSERCACHE content reference attribute set to N.

  Important: Do not enable homepage caching for any component-based pagelet that uses interactive processing mode.

When this check box is deselected, any PORTAL_NOBROWSERCACHE content reference attributes are ignored.

Specifying the Homepage Stale Interval

Specify the homepage caching interval for a site by entering a value in seconds in the Homepage Stale Interval field in the On the Browser group box of the Web Profile Configuration - Caching page. When the specified interval elapses, the browser sends a new request for the homepage to the portal web server the next time a user accesses the homepage. The default value for this field is 1200.

Disabling Caching for Selected Browsers

Because browsers don't all process HTML in exactly the same way, you might need to disable homepage caching for selected browser versions. This can be useful if you have one or two supported browsers and want to disable caching for nonstandard browsers that could pose an administration problem.

To disable homepage caching for a browser version, add a row to the Browsers grid of the Web Profile Configuration - Caching page, enter the browser's user agent ID, and select the Cache Home Page check box for that row. Homepage caching is enabled for all browser versions except those with this check box deselected, regardless of whether they're listed in the grid.

Note:

As a convenience, several well-known browser types are included as sample rows in the configuration. All of the sample rows have homepage caching enabled by default.