CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netasp.net-mvc-4redisdistributed-cache
HereToLearn
HereToLearn

Reputation: 13

Asp.net Session or Distributed Cache - which is viable solution

We have MVC 4 application which communicates with backend D365 entities. The application makes a lot of CRM calls to get the data hence it was really slow and the user experience was very poor

To improve its performance, cache layer has been added and whenever application gets a data from CRM, it puts it into Session variable.

Surely, that helped with the performance as within the user's session , it prevents the trip to server and everything is served from session data. However now the application is having a lot of data syncing issues. (data saved by one user is not reflected to others until they logout and re-login)

My questions : was it really a good way of handling the performance issue the application was having? In my opinion, rather then fixing the performance issue , a workaround was added which becomes the cause of other issue.

secondly question: is there a better architecture/design that can be put in place which will improve the performance as well as resolve the data syncing issues the application is having? I am thinking to add a distributed cache layer (Azure Redis likely) to replace in-place Session layer, and optionally (if that makes sense) to implement write-through strategy in Redis so that the front-end application only talks to Cache and let cache keep the data store up to date.

Any guidance or pointer is very much appreciated!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 387

Answers (1)

Martin Devillers
Martin Devillers

Reputation: 18012

I think you're on the right path. As you've already experienced adding a cache to your application introduces new challenges: handling stale data. In your case it data is cached at the user-level, which means each user has its own cache. This works well if each user works on their own piece of the data. For instance: a banking app where each user sees only their own bank statements (and never those of others). However, this is not the case in your application. Multiple users operate on the same data and now you're running into synchronization issues. A quick fix could be to replace the Session cache with the Application cache which is shared with all users.

Externalizing your cache (e.g. Redis or Memcached) is another solution and offers many advantages (e.g. distribution; scaling; synchronization; etc.), but also increases the complexity of your application. Now your application is dependent on another piece of infrastructure with its own behavior.

Upvotes: 0

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