

Re: HTTP Caching Model?

From: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 94 14:55:20 PST
Message-Id: <9412132255.AA28028@acetes.pa.dec.com>
To: "Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>
You point out a problem with a naive approach to proxy (relay) caching:

>On a server S, a document D is available as plain text, HTML, or
>postscript.  Client C1 is configured to only accept HTML. This client
>requests document http://S/D via proxy P as:
>	GET http://S/D HTTP/1.0
>	Accept: text/html
>Proxy P connects to S, requests the document, caches it, and returns
>it to C1.
>Client C2 is configured to accept postscript and HTML, and to prefer
>postscript over HTML. It requests the same document through the same
>	GET http://S/D HTTP/1.0
>	Accept: text/html; q=0.5
>	Accept: application/postscript; q=1.0
>Proxy P receives the request, and notices that it has http://S/D in its
>cache, so it returns the cached copy.  Note that had C2 requested the
>document straight from S, it would have got postscript. But it got HTML
>from the proxy.
>To me, this looks like the caching performed by P is not transparent,
>and hence violates the protocol.

The problem here is that the "cache tag" kept by P is insufficient.
You can't just use the URL.  But if the "tag" includes an encoding
of the Accept: headers, then P's caching could be "correct" in the
sense that it never returns the wrong format of the document.  (We
still have to worry about returning the wrong version, but cache
consistency protocols are another can of worms entirely.)

Consider what would happen in this case if P entered the document
in its cache with this tag, constructed from C1's request:
	URL: http://S/D
	Accepts: text/html
	Cached-format: text/html
Then when C2 makes its GET request, P can see that the cached document
might not be sufficient, because P never asked S for a postscript
file, and C2 prefers postscript to text.

Now, consider the scenario when the requests are done in the opposite
order, and with S only holding the HTML form of the document.  C2 makes
its request, S responds with html, and P caches the document with this tag:
	URL: http://S/D
	Accept: text/html; q=0.5
	Accept: application/postscript; q=1.0
	Cached-format: text/html
Now, if the next request is either from C1 with "Accept: text/html"
or C2, P can tell from this tag that it already has what the client
wants (provided that S has not subsequently added a postscript file
to its repertoire; this is the cache-consistency problem again).  I.e.,
P can see that because the "strictest" request asked for postscript
in preference to HTML, and no postscript is cached, then it must not
be available.  P's behavior is entirely correct.

Finally, consider the scenario when S has both HTML and Postscript,
and C1 and C2 have both made requests.  P will end up with both forms
in its cache, with this tag:
	URL: http://S/D
	Accept: text/html; q=0.5
	Accept: application/postscript; q=1.0
	Cached-format: text/html
	Cached-format: application/postscript
rom this point, P can respond to requests for either Postscript or
HTML, since it has them both cached.

Now consider what happens when P has to remove some items from its
cache, due to lack of space.  Suppose it removes the Postscript version.
It then has to change its tag either to say:
	URL: http://S/D
	Accept: text/html; q=0.5
	Accept: application/postscript; q=1.0
	Cached-format: text/html
	Previously-Cached-format: application/postscript
or to say
	URL: http://S/D
	Accept: text/html; q=0.5
	Cached-format: text/html
That is, either it must remember that it had a postscript version
cached at one point, or it must forget that some client had asked it
for postscript.  I would suggest doing the former, because it preserves
more information.  For example, if S does not have the postscript file,
C2 issues its usual request and P uses the former model, then it knows
if postscript is available from S or not.  But if P uses the latter
model, then it must re-request the postscript file from S, even if at
one point it know that S didn't have the postscript.

Assuming that I haven't made some fatal logical error in this analysis,
it should be possible for a caching proxy to
	(1) provide correct (transparent) behavior
	(2) do the minimal number of server accesses
without any HTTP protocol changes, simply by recording as much information
as possible about the requests that caused cache entries to be created.

Always ignoring the consistency problem, of course.

Received on Tuesday, 13 December 1994 15:34:18 EST
