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Improve caching to reduce delay between request and XForms processing #1239

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ebruchez opened this issue Sep 5, 2013 · 2 comments
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@ebruchez
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ebruchez commented Sep 5, 2013

With a form created by a customer, we see about 1000 ms between the logging of the incoming request and the beginning of XForms processing.

Out of this we can see:

  • 220 ms: timing of reading form.xhtml
  • 243 ms: "reading input", which probably does not include the above 220 ms

Some thoughts:

  • XPL processing might take time, but why so long?
  • there should be a conditional GET on the form definition and the processing should be very fast
@ebruchez
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How things work now:

  • Form Runner is hooked up in an XPL pipeline
  • new/edit/view page uses model detail-model.xpl and view html-view.xpl
  • pipeline
    • model: read-form.xpl
      • oxf:url-generator
      • XInclude on form definition
      • store in request as fr-form-definition for Summary page
    • view: unroll-form.xpl
      • components.xsl
      • XInclude
    • epilogue.xpl
      • xforms-epilogue.xpl
        • oxf:xforms-to-xhtml ⇒ where static state caching takes place

Caching at the XForms level:

  • see XFormsToSomething
  • cached against processor input
    • Stage1CacheableState (URIReferences)
    • Stage2CacheableState (staticStateDigest + template)
  • XFormsStaticState stored into separate XFormsStaticStateCache, indexed by staticStateDigest

Here is what we expect:

  • XFormsToSomething actual dependencies
    • form definition from persistence layer
      • app name, form name (in URL path)
      • version headers, one of Orbeon-For-Document-Id or Orbeon-Form-Definition-Version
      • NOTE: document id is also passed as document URL parameter.
    • dependent URLs (static instances, schemas, XIncludes)
    • local property files
  • static state must be cached based on those dependencies
  • form definition can also change independently in db (e.g. remote publish) ⇒ ETag

The mechanism must also work with the form version number headers:

  • requires using Vary header
  • use ETag and If-None-Match
  • what ETag could be
    • persistence layer provides it
    • digest of the form definition
    • row id of form definition in database
  • form version made available in the pipeline (which is input to caching too)
    • form-version can be provided as URL parameter to FR page
    • BUT if document id is provided, form-version is ignored and overridden by version returned by persistence layer via orbeon-form-definition-version (or 1 if not found)
  • server can respond with
    • ETag
    • Last-Modified and no Etag
    • none of those
    • Q: should persistence layer be required to have versioning capability?

High-level algorithm proposal:

  • cache keeps entries indexed by app/form name, then ETag
  • probably only keep max of n ETags per app/form name, per LRU
  • incoming request processing
    • request to persistence layer
      • URL w/ app/form name
      • Orbeon-For-Document-Id or Orbeon-Form-Definition-Version header (vary)
      • list of ETags: all ETags in cache for given incoming app/form name
      • must keep ref during request to persistence layer to all cache entries for app/form, so they don't go away
    • response is EITHER 200 + document + ETag
      • create static state
      • cache static state by form/app name then etag
    • OR 304 + one of the ETags which matched (should be only 1)
      • refresh cache entry for app/name/etag
  • persistence implemenatation
    • gets app/form/version headers
    • determines version when needed
    • checks incoming ETags if any
    • responds with 200 + document + Etag or 304 + Etag
    • ETag could be if of document in db (would fail to update if somebody update form def in place, but nobody should!)
  • Q: should cache hold digest, or static state itself (and keep separate static state cache like now)?
    • A: TODO
  • Q: how to handle instance/schema/XInclude dependencies
    • we create the algorithm above within e.g. oxf:form-runner-persistence-client
    • produces key = ETag, validity = 0
    • oxf:xforms-to-xhtml stays connected to its input pipeline as it is now
  • if we use pipeline/custom URL generator, should be equivalent to the above

Next steps:

  • first implementation of oxf:form-runner-persistence-client
  • make sure transformation pipeline is pure
  • document
    • what persistence implementors must do
      • either use ETags (specify what the requirements are for unicity)
      • or use Last-Modified if no versioning required
      • Q: should document URL parameter be removed?

@ebruchez
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Following #3272, it would be really good to improve form loading. Requirements:

  • performance
    • conditional GET
    • possibly local caching
  • native Scala
  • testable logic

The ideas in the previous comments still appear sound. In addition, we might try to get rid of the pipeline entirely.

@ebruchez ebruchez changed the title Long delay between request and XForms processing Improve caching to reduce delay between request and XForms processing Dec 7, 2017
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