Application Caching using EhCache

Ehcache is an open source caching system that handles application caching.

Advantages

Using Ehcache gives Elastic Path the following benefits:

JMX Support
Unified run-time configuration for application and OpenJPA L2 caches
Improved cache visibility and control

Application caching is enabled in Cortex, Search Server, Integration Server, and the Import/Export CLI tool.

Cache Behaviour

Most application caches are initialized using the EhcacheCacheFactory class. This creates a new cache in the EhCache cache manager and then wraps the result using EhcacheCacheAdapter which implements the com.elasticpath.cache.Cache interface.

The com.elasticpath.cache.Cache interface exposes several important methods which are described below.

`CacheResult<V> get(K key)`

This simple method retrieves the value from the cache for the passed key. The CacheResult object allows the caller to determine if the object was present in the cache by calling the isPresent method. It is possible to cache a null result, which will return true when isPresent is invoked, but the get method will return null.

It is usually recommended to use the get method with the fallbackLoader parameter instead of this method to ensure thread safety.

`V get(K key, Function<K, V> fallbackLoader)`

This method retrieves the value from the cache for the passed key and falls back to the fallbackLoader function to retrieve the value if it isn't present. The result from the fallbackLoader is inserted into the cache.

This method also uses XSync to ensure that if multiple threads request the same key value, only the first will invoke the fallbackLoader and the other threads will block until the fallbackLoader completes, and then all the threads will receive this value.

`V get(K key, Function<K, V> fallbackLoader, BiFunction<K, V, V> populateCacheFunction)`

This method retrieves the value from the cache for the passed key and falls back to the fallbackLoader function to retrieve the value if it isn't present. The populateCacheFunction is called after the fallbackLoader function completes, and allows more complex cache population logic. It is the responsibility of the populateCacheFunction to populate the cache, if necessary.

`Map<K, V> getAll(Collection<? extends K> keyValues)`

This method retrieves multiple value from the cache for the passed keys. Each result is returned in the map associated to it's corresponding key.

`Map<K, V> getAll(Collection<K> keyValues, Function<Collection<K>, Map<K, V>> fallbackLoader)`

This method retrieves multiple value from the cache for the passed keys. For any values not present in the cache, a single call to the fallbackLoader function is made to retrieve the missing values. The results from the fallbackLoader are inserted into the cache as separate entries.

`V put(K key, V value)`

This method inserts a single value into the cache corresponding to the passed key.

`boolean remove(K key)`

This method removes a single value from the cache for the passed key.

`void removeAll()`

This method removes all values from the cache.

`boolean containsKey(K key)`

This method returns true if the specified key exists in the cache.

Configuration

Elastic Path provides the following sample Ehcache configuration files in the extensions/database/ext-data module:

environments/default/files/conf/cache/ehcache-5-seconds.xml for use in testing, authoring and demo environments
environments/default/files/conf/cache/ehcache-60-minutes.xml for use in live environments
environments/local/files/conf/cache/ehcache-local.xml for use in development

For development use, you need to copy configuration files to your ${user.home}/ep/conf directory as described in Updating Configuration Files.

For deployed environments, the configuration file is specified using the ep.external.ehcache.xml.path property, either as a JVM parameter or in the ep.properties file.

The file path in ep.external.ehcache.xml.path must be absolute. There are three supported formats as shown in the following examples:

${user.home}/ep/conf/cache/ehcache.xml (Linux and Windows)
/ep/conf/cache/ehcache.xml (Linux) or c:/ep/conf/cache/ehcache.xml (Windows)
file:///ep/conf/cache/ehcache.xml (Linux) or file:///c:/ep/conf/cache/ehcache.xml (Windows)

Additional Slash

The additional slash in file:/// is required by Spring.

All Ehcaches can also be completely disabled by setting the -Dnet.sf.ehcache.disabled=true JVM parameter.

An application restart is required for configuration changes to take effect.

Cortex and Integration Server Application Caches

The application level caches sit above the data access layer and are used by Elastic Path to cache longer lived application data.

Application cache configuration (time-to-live, time-to-idle, and max entries) can be defined in the external configuration file described above. If no external EhCache file is defined, or if the file doesn’t contain an entry for a cache, then the fallback configuration is defined by the cache bean definition in Spring. See Application Data Caching a for a list of caches.

Search Server Application Caches

In the Search Server, many application caches have their configuration overridden to a shorter time-to-live. This is done to ensure that the search server doesn’t index out-of-date cached values.

By default, all caches, except domain (starting with com.elasticpath) and openjpa-query, have time-to-live and time-to-idle overridden to 5 seconds by the ehCacheConfigurationConfigurator bean.

These values can be changed via system properties, if required:

-Dep.ehcache.ttl.seconds.override=<N>
-Dep.ehcache.tti.seconds.override=<N>

Additionally, which caches are overridden by the ehCacheConfigurationConfigurator bean can be configured in its Spring properties:

cachesToOverride: the list of caches for which time-to-live/time-to-idle will be overridden
cachesToExclude: the list of caches that will be excluded from overriding
domainCacheNamePrefixesToExclude: the list of domain cache prefixes that will be excluded from overriding

OpenJPA L2 Cache

OpenJPA uses ehCache as a backing store for its level 2 JPA cache.

The default Ehcache OpenJPA L2 cache configuration is defined in ehcache.xml in the commerce-engine/core/openjpa-osgi-wrapper module.

<defaultCache
    maxEntriesLocalHeap="10000"
    eternal="false"
    timeToIdleSeconds="1"
    timeToLiveSeconds="1"
    diskExpiryThreadIntervalSeconds="120"
    memoryStoreEvictionPolicy="LRU"
    statistics="true"
    />

L2 Data Cache

The L2 (Level 2) data cache holds entity instances using their primary keys as identifiers. A separate cache is created for each domain entity with a cache name of the fully qualified class name (e.g. com.elasticpath.domain.catalog.impl.ProductImpl).

Entities will not be stored in the data cache if they have the @DataCache(enabled = false) annotation set. We recommend that the data cache be completely disabled for entities that are modified by shoppers, such as shopping cart entities.

The time-to-live for each data cache can be set in the following ways, evaluated from top to bottom:

A timeout (in seconds) can be set in the data cache annotation as follows: @DataCache(timeout = 3600)
An explicit cache entry can be specified for the entity using its fully-qualified class name.
The openjpa.DataCacheTimeout JPA property can be set for all entities.
If none of the above overrides are set, the timeToLiveSeconds attribute of the defaultCache is used.

We recommend against using a data cache with more than a one-second timeout, as this can lead to dirty reads and inconsistent behaviour.

L2 Query Cache

The L2 (Level 2) query cache caches query results so that repeated queries with the same parameters can retrieve results directly from the cache rather than hitting the database again. The cache holds the list of primary keys for the entities that match the query criteria, not the actual entities themselves which are stored in the L2 data cache.

The OpenJPA query cache is configured by the following element:

<cache name="openjpa-querycache"
    maxEntriesLocalHeap="10000"
    eternal="false"
    timeToIdleSeconds="3600"
    timeToLiveSeconds="3600"
    statistics="true"
/>

Configuration Example

Here is a sample configuration override file:

note

For information on Ehcache’s configurable properties, see Ehcache’s Cache Configuration guide.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<ehcache xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="ehcache.xsd"
         name="ep-default-cache"
         updateCheck="false">

    <!--
       Read the Ehcache documentation for help on configuring this file.
       The <defaultCache> configuration is used as the default for programmatically created caches.
       <cache> entries will not inherit configuration from <defaultCache>.
    -->
    <defaultCache
            timeToIdleSeconds="1"
            timeToLiveSeconds="1"
            maxEntriesLocalHeap="10000"
            eternal="false"
            diskExpiryThreadIntervalSeconds="120"
            memoryStoreEvictionPolicy="LRU"
            statistics="true"
    />

    <cache name="openjpa-querycache"
           timeToIdleSeconds="5"
           timeToLiveSeconds="5"
           maxEntriesLocalHeap="10000"
           eternal="false"
           statistics="true"
    />

    <!--
       Override application cache configuration.
    -->
    <cache name="baseAmountCache"
           timeToIdleSeconds="3600"
           timeToLiveSeconds="3600"
           maxEntriesLocalHeap="10000"
           statistics="true"
    />

</ehcache>

An example of overriding all caches can be found in the ehcache-5-seconds.xml file in the extensions/database/ext-data/src/main/resources/environments/default/files/conf/cache/ directory.

Recommended Practices

Every commerce implementation is unique. No one configuration fits all. You will need to discover the configurations that work for your implementation. Keep in mind:

Configure lower cache timeouts in development, QA and authoring environments where users want to see changes quickly and performance isn’t a primary consideration
Configure much higher timeouts for production and performance test live environments
Stress your application while using JMX console to monitor the number of cache requests

This will help you determine if the DB entities needs to be cached and for how long.
Be cautious about increasing L2 cache timeouts

Complex domain object graphs, such a products or categories, can get out of sync when L2 objects are refreshed independently of each other.
Keep conducting performance tests until the optimal results are achieved
Ehcache documentation contains comprehensive information about sizing caches.