CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#wcfcachingmemorycacheobjectcache
Thelonias
Thelonias

Reputation: 2935

ObjectCache or local fields for my WCF service?

I have a service that I wanted to implement some sort of caching on, but am unsure as to whether I should use .NET 4's ObjectCache or simply have private fields on the service that, after some time, gets refreshed.

The situation is as follows: The service is used to return large chunks of data. Currently, we hit the database for the data on every request to the service. This data is only refreshed once a day at midnight. I want to cache this data on the service and refresh it every night after the database updates (say around 12:30am).

Now, in the past, we would populate local fields and create a "monitor thread" that would run constantly and after some specified amount of time, re-populate those fields. One downside I saw to that was the service class had some extra code in it for the storage.

If I switch to the ObjectCache, one benefit is the auto-removal when expired. What I was thinking of doing was assigning a callback method to the CacheEntryRemovedCallback delegate and when that was called, just re-cache the data at some point in the future (~30 minutes once the database is refreshed).

My question is, for a WCF service, what's the more desirable option for caching data?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 587

Answers (1)

Dmitry Harnitski
Dmitry Harnitski

Reputation: 6008

Use System.Runtime.Caching. It is better than homegrown bicycle.

You can use SqlChangeMonitor if your data updated only at midnight. That will significantly simplify logic and your cache will be synchronized with data.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/167282/NET-4-0-MemoryCache-with-SqlChangeMonitor

Upvotes: 1

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