caching PROPFIND (was: Re: Subversion presentation at SVLUG)

[Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org>]

On Sun, Apr 08, 2001 at 11:47:30AM +0100, Joe Orton wrote:
>...
> Yeah, Apache/mod_proxy as a caching reverse proxy is even easier (it
> looks like a normal server but actually forwards the requests back to
> some other server when necessary).
> 
> Both of these are only ever going to cache content (i.e. GET requests);
> PROPFIND requests are not cacheable, so every checkout is still going to
> have to go back to the origin server (indirectly).

Actually, I bet you we could cache certain PROPFIND responses :-)

Specifically, when we do a "checkout", we fetch from a "baseline
collection". That is a static, readonly tree of resources. Thus, the
PROPFIND results should be constant. Once we get near 1.0 and our use of DAV
stabilizes, then I'll examine all of the PROPFINDs that we issue. I bet we
could add some Cache-Control headers to some of those.

Even if we can't cache the PROPFINDs, it is nice to point out that they
occur only at each "directory." So maybe 1 out of 10 requests? Even that
will reduce the load on the SVN server.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/