Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

An Oracle White Paper

February 2010

Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with

Oracle Web Cache
 Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

Disclaimer
The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes
only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code,
or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release,
and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion
of Oracle.
 Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................................... 4
Install Oracle Web Cache .............................................................................................................................. 4
Configure Oracle Web Cache ........................................................................................................................ 5
Configuration Specific for WebCenter Spaces .......................................................................................... 5
Metrics available from Simulation ................................................................................................................ 6
Bandwidth simulation with and without Web Cache ................................................................................ 7
Latency simulation with and without Web Cache..................................................................................... 7
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 8
 Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

Introduction
Oracle Web Cache is a secure reverse-proxy cache and compression engine that can greatly accelerate
your Oracle WebCenter applications and reduce server load. Deployed between the user’s browser and
your web server, Oracle Web Cache improves the performance of your site by caching and compressing
frequently accessed content. Oracle Web Cache provides state and dynamic content caching, partial
page caching, request filtering, and compression. The following diagram depicts how Web Cache works
in a WebCenter deployment:

All client requests go directly from the browser to Oracle Web Cache (1). If there is a cache hit, the
content is served to the client from Web Cache (2). If the content is not available in Web Cache, the
request goes to WebCenter Spaces (3), which accesses the database to retrieve the content (4). The
retrieved content is passed to the client via WebCenter Spaces and Web Cache (4, 5, 6, 7).

Web Cache improves the performance of your WebCenter application by:

• Serving cached documents in memory, thus accelerating the application

• Reducing the load on content-generating origin servers

• Load balancing requests across multiple origin servers

• Providing on-the-fly compression for cacheable and non-cacheable content

Install Oracle Web Cache

Web Cache installation is part of the Webtier utilities set of products. As of November 2009, you can
download the most recent version of the product from this location:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/middleware/htdocs/111110_fmw.html
 Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

After downloading, install the product according to the instructions in Oracle Fusion Middleware
Installation Guide for Oracle Web Tier (available here:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/doc.1111/e14260/toc.htm).

Configure Oracle Web Cache

After installation is complete, configure Web Cache according to the instructions in Oracle Fusion
Middleware Administrator’s Guide for Oracle Web Cache
(http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/web.1111/e10143/toc.htm).

At a minimum, you must configure:

• Operation and listen ports

• Site definition

• Origin servers

• Site-to-server mappings

For a WebCenter installation, Web Cache can be configured either in front of an http server, which in turn
front-ends WebCenter Spaces, or as part of the WebCenter Spaces instance itself.

Configuration Specifics for WebCenter Spaces

1. On the Web Cache Resource Limits administration screen, increase the value of the Maximum
Cached Object Size field to ensure that the RCF JS library can be cached.
 Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

The default value is 100 KB. Modify the value to 4MB (4096 KB).

2. Ensure that the following rules are specified For All Sites:

• Images should be cached, but not compressed

• CSS files should be both cached and compressed for all request types
• JS files should be both cached and compressed for all request types
• HTML files should be both cached and compressed
• SWF files should be cached, but not compressed
• Add a rule to compress, but not cache, .jspx files for all GET and POSTS
• Add a rule to compress, but not cache, \.jspx.*$ files for all GET and POSTS
• Add a rule to compress, but not cache, adw\.jspx for all request types
• Add a rule to not compress and not cache profiling.js for all request types

Metrics Available from Simulation

The results from internal simulation tests are presented below. These results are intended as examples;
actual results in your implementation may vary, depending on usage and infrastructure setup.
 Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

Bandwidth Simulation With and Without Web Cache

• When Web Cache is used, there is an improvement of 12% in standard LAN default latency when
compared to the response time without Web Cache.
• When Web Cache is used, there is an improvement of 53% in 256 kbps default latency when
compared to the response time without Web Cache.

Latency Simulation With and Without Web Cache

 Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

• When Web Cache is used, there is an improvement of 12% in standard LAN default latency when
compared to the response time without Web Cache.
• When Web Cache is used, there is an improvement of 29% in standard LAN 100ms latency when
compared to the response time without Web Cache.

Conclusion
Oracle Web Cache can provide a number of measurable benefits to a WebCenter Spaces deployment by
speeding up your applications and reducing overall server load.
 Oracle White Paper – Improving WebCenter Spaces Performance with Oracle Web Cache

Improving Webcenter Spaces Performance with

Oracle Web Cache
February 2010
Author: Soy Joseph

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