Partial Cache Clearing in Sitecore

For a very long time, some very serious performance issues have affected certain types of Sitecore deployments. It has to do with scaling a Sitecore solution into webfarms (multiple content delivery servers) and the use of the Sitecore Staging Module.

 

In very short summary, if the website is updated frequently (say, for instance, an editorial staff of 10 or so, posting relevant market updates) AND the website is under heavy load, most practical uses of the tool Sitecore recommends and supports will more or less kill performance on your SQL Servers or whatever storage mechanism you have in place.

 

I’ve never blogged in detail about this issue, as I didn’t have a client myself that was affected directly by this issue. Paul George has blogged about it in detail however, and if you want to learn more about what this issue is and if it could be affecting you, take a look at these posts:

 

• Problems with Sitecore and the staging module part 1
• Problems with the Sitecore 6 staging module part 2 – extranet user loses session

 

So why write about it now?

 

The good news

Alex Shyba posted about a new Sitecore Shared Source module that was just made publically available; SitecoreStager – Sitecore Partial (item) Cache Clearing Module.

 

In short, instead of just uncritically clearing the entire cache on your target server, dropping user sessions, putting out the cat and so on – the SitecoreStager will instead execute a partial cache clear and in essence just clear items from the cache that were affected by the publishing operation.

 

This is very good news indeed, and for those clients who have been affected by this problem I am sure it’s tipped hats all ‘round :-)

 

The bad news

This is actually something that has been nagging me a bit for some time now, and has just been refreshed by this release.

 

It is Shared Source.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I think the Sitecore Shared Source Library is an excellent idea. I have code in there myself, and it’s a perfect place to go look for those “there has to be someone else who had this problem and solved it” code snippets and field types and whatever it may be.

 

But it is also, for obvious reasons, unsupported by Sitecore themselves. I mean, how could they?  Half the modules and code pieces in there come from independent sources like myself – and it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect Sitecore to support them.

 

But what about the code Sitecore release to the library themselves?

 

Would you not agree; “With Sitecore, you can have a team of editors publishing content to an enterprise level site, and performance will still rock” is a statement you’ll find (albeit probably not verbatim) in Sitecore marketing material?   But it is unsupported?

 

I feel somewhat the same for the Multiple Sites Manager…  shouldn’t a standard Sitecore have a solution for regular (advanced) editors to set up new websites without having to edit configuration files?  Or is that limited to Foundry licenses only?

 

What I mean is

Sitecore marketing materials doesn’t exactly help anyone much, when they boast “Comes with Blog Modules, Wiki Modules and even Microsoft Dynamix and Microsoft BizTalk integration (yes…)”; yet offers little or no actual support other than pointing the users, the licensees, the Sitecore implementors (like myself) in the direction of the Shared Souce Library, shrug and go… “From here, you’re on your own”.

 

Kudos for making this module. I think this belongs in the core package however, fully supported and updated with every Sitecore release. That’s my 2 cents worth.

 

 

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