Oracle Web Cache Technology Intelligence

What is Oracle Web Cache?

Oracle Web Cache is a content-aware caching server that improves performance of Oracle Application Server deployments. It sits between browsers and web servers, caching and compressing content to reduce load on origin servers and improve response times.

Oracle Web Cache supports ESI (Edge Side Includes) for partial page caching, allowing dynamic personalization while caching page fragments. It provides load balancing, clustering, and failover capabilities for high-availability enterprise deployments.

While Oracle Web Cache has been deprecated in favor of other Oracle solutions and general-purpose caching like Varnish, it remains in use in legacy Oracle Application Server environments. Detection indicates an enterprise Oracle infrastructure.

Oracle Web Cache Features

Content Caching: Full page caching. Partial page caching (ESI). Session-aware caching. Invalidation rules.

ESI Support: Edge Side Includes. Fragment caching. Personalization. Dynamic assembly.

Compression: Gzip compression. Response compression. Bandwidth reduction. Client capability detection.

Load Balancing: Origin server distribution. Health monitoring. Failover support. Session affinity.

Clustering: Multi-node cache clusters. Synchronized invalidation. High availability. Horizontal scaling.

Security: SSL termination. Authentication integration. Oracle SSO. Access control.

Oracle Web Cache Use Cases

Oracle Portal: Portal caching. Content acceleration. User personalization. Page assembly.

Oracle Forms/Reports: Application caching. Static asset delivery. Report caching. Forms performance.

J2EE Applications: OC4J acceleration. Java application caching. Session management. Load distribution.

Enterprise Portals: Corporate intranets. Employee portals. Knowledge bases. Document management.

E-Business Suite: Oracle EBS acceleration. Module caching. User interface caching.

Legacy Oracle: Oracle AS deployments. Existing investments. Upgrade path considerations.

Oracle Web Cache Code Examples

ESI Include Tags

<!-- Oracle Web Cache ESI -->
<esi:include src="/user/welcome.jsp" />

<!-- Conditional ESI -->
<esi:choose>
    <esi:when test="$(HTTP_COOKIE{user_type})=='premium'">
        <esi:include src="/content/premium.html" />
    </esi:when>
    <esi:otherwise>
        <esi:include src="/content/standard.html" />
    </esi:otherwise>
</esi:choose>

<!-- Inline ESI with timeout -->
<esi:include src="/api/stock-price" timeout="5" onerror="continue" />

Cache Control Headers

// Java Servlet cache control
response.setHeader("Surrogate-Control", "max-age=3600");
response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-store"); // Browser shouldn't cache

// Invalidation hint
response.setHeader("Surrogate-Key", "product-123 category-electronics");

// ESI capability detection
if (request.getHeader("Surrogate-Capability") != null) {
    // Client supports ESI
    response.setHeader("Surrogate-Control", "content=\"ESI/1.0\"");
}

Oracle Web Cache Legacy Status

Deprecated: Not in newer Oracle releases. Legacy product. Migration recommended. Limited updates.

Migration Options: Oracle Traffic Director. Varnish Cache. NGINX. Commercial CDNs. Cloud caching.

Legacy Considerations: Existing deployments. Oracle AS dependencies. ESI migration. Upgrade planning.

Historical Value: Pioneer in ESI. Enterprise caching. Oracle ecosystem integration. Performance innovation.

Alternative Technologies: Varnish for ESI. NGINX Plus. CloudFlare. AWS CloudFront. Akamai.

Support Status: Extended support only. No new features. Security patches limited. EOL planning needed.