M.: Performance Analysis of an Associative Caching Scheme for Client-Server Databases

This paper presents a detailed performance study of the associative caching scheme proposed in [11]. A client cache dynamically loads query results in the course of transaction execution, and formulates a description of its current contents. Predicate-based reasoning is used on the cache description to examine and maintain the cache. The bene ts of the scheme include local evaluation of associative queries, at the cost of maintaining the cached query results through update noti cations from the server. In this paper, we investigate through detailed simulation the behavior of this caching scheme for a client-server database under di erent workloads and contention pro les. An optimized version of our basic caching scheme is also proposed and studied. We examine both read-only and update transactions, with the e ect of updates on the caching performance as our primary focus. Using an extended version of a standard database benchmark, we identify scenarios where these caching schemes improve the system performance and scalability, as compared to systems without client-side caching. Our results demonstrate that associative caching can be bene cial even for moderately high update activity.