Understanding Caching Scope

You can define caching for server-based portal content with one of three levels of scope:

• Private scope.

  This is also known as the user scope. The portal maintains the cached content independently for each user. This scope is useful when the content that is displayed, such as a 401K balance, is specific to the user who's signed in.

• Role scope.

  Each user is assigned one or more roles. The portal maintains a single cache of the content for all users with a given combination of roles. This scope is useful when the content that is displayed, such as the menu structure, is specific to the role set of the user who’s signed in. If your user population has many unique role combinations, your caching memory requirements may be nearly the same as private scope caching.

• Public scope.

  This is also known as the application scope. The portal maintains a single cache of the content for all users who are using a given application. This scope is useful when all users who have access to this content, such as company news articles, bulletins, or messages, see the same thing. Because only one cache object is managed in memory for your entire user population, this is the least memory-intensive scope option.