Microsoft is organizing the windows Azure camp in various cities of India. It’s a great chance to learn new things about Microsoft Windows Azure. So If you want to be part of that then you must register in this event. Following are date and cities information.

Ahmedabad- 10th April 2011 now postponed to 30th April( I will be there at 30th April 2011)
Banglore-30th April 2011
Chennai-9th April 2011
Delhi-10th April 2011
Hyderabad-10th April 2011
Kolkata-10th April 2011
Mumbai-9th April 2011
Mysore-10th April 2011
Pune –10th April 2011
Triavndrum –30th April 2011

Here is the link from where you can register for that event
http://www.microsoft.com/india/azurecontest/azurecamp.aspx

See you guys there.. Stay tuned for more..

Caching data greatly increase the website performance as its not going to do server round trip. I have already mentioned how you can use Output caching in web forms in earlier blog post here. Let’s see how we can do same thing with asp.net mvc. For this example I have used asp.net mvc razor. In asp.net mvc you can use OutputCache attribute to cache the output. Just like below.

[OutputCache(VaryByParam="none",Duration=60)]
public ActionResult Index()
{
   ViewModel.Message = DateTime.Now.ToString();
   return View();
}

Here it will cache the view for 60 second and will not go for server round trip. Let’s see How it will look into the browser.

You can also set the output caching in web.config and and create output cache profile which you can use any where like following.

<caching>
<outputCacheSettings>
  <outputCacheProfiles>
    <clear/>
    <add
      name="MyOuputCacheProfile"
      duration="60"
      varyByParam="none" />
  </outputCacheProfiles>
</outputCacheSettings>
</caching>

Here how you can use that profile.

 [OutputCache(CacheProfile = "MyOuputCacheProfile")]
public ActionResult Index()
{
    ViewModel.Message = DateTime.Now.ToString();
    return View();
}

It support four type of settings for output caching. VaryByContentEncoding, VaryByParam, VaryByCustom,VaryByHeader. Hope this will help you!! happy Programming.

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET MVC,Razor,OutputCache

Recently one of my friend ask about output cache so I decided to put a post about how output cache works and what is the advantages and disadvantage of using output cache. Output cache is a technique to cache generated response from the asp.net pages or controls. Output Caching increases the performance drastically by reducing server round trips. We can use @OutputCache directive to controls output caching for a page or controls.

The @OutputCache includes following attributes.

• Duration: This attribute will explain how long output cache will be there for a page or control. It can be set in seconds. If you set 60 then it will not going to generate response from server until 60 second It will generate response from the cache it self. Here is example of duration where it will set 60 second for page.

<%@ OutputCache Duration="60" %>  

• VaryByParam: This attribute will determine cache entries based on get or post parameters. It will vary cache based on get or post parameters suppose you set product Id query string as VaryByParam it will create a different cache based on product Id. Following is a example how you can set the VaryByParam based on Product Id.
  



<%@ OutputCache Duration="Seconds" VaryByParam="ProductId"%>

• Location: This attribute will specify where the Item will be cached. Here are options available for that.
• Any: The output cache can be located at any browser from where request is generated or Server where request is processed or Proxy server participating in request.
  
• Client: The output cache will be located on browser client from where request is generated.
  
• Downstream: The output cache can be stored in any HTTP 1.1 cache-capable devices other than the origin server. This includes proxy servers and the client that made the request.
  
• Server: The output cache will stored in the server where generated request will be processed.
  
• ServerAndClient: The output cache will generated either on Browser where request generated or on server where generated request will be processed. Proxy servers are not allowed for this.
  
• None: None specifies that output cache will be disabled for this controls or Page.

Here is example of location.

<%@ outputcache duration="10"  Location="Server" %>

• VaryByCustom: This attribute is for different browsers where request is generated this means it will generate new instance of cache based on different browser versions.
  

<%@ OutputCache Duration="Seconds" VaryByCustom="Browser" %>



• VaryByHeader: This attribute allows to determine different instances of cache based on the headers. Here is example for it.
  



<%@ OutputCache VaryByHeader="Accept-Language" %>

Note: If you specify the output cache it will not fire server side events like click or selected index changed etc. So make sure the controls that you used in output cache will not have this kind of controls Or you have to handle this in other scenarios.

Hope this will help you.. Happy programming!!

Technorati Tags: Cache,OutputCache,ASP.NET

ASP.net cache is great feature through which we can increase the performance of the our web application via reducing server round trips to database. We can cache any serializable data into the cache. There are so many ways to cache data but one of the simplest way to cache data like insert data into cache object. Here we must need to validate cache if any data is changed and there are so many ways from where we can set dependency to validate the cache like files,SQL Cache Dependency etc. We also can validate cache or expire via setting time to duration to its object. Like after the defined time our cache will expire and then it will again put new fresh data into the cache. This is called as time base expiration. We can put this kind of expiration via two way.

1. Absolute Expiration
2. Sliding Expiration

Absolute Expiration: Absolute expiration means It will expire cache after some time period set at the time of activating cache. This will be absolute expiration whether cache will be used or not It will expire the cache. This type of expiration used to cache data which are not frequently changing.

Sliding Expiration: Sliding expiration means It will expire cache after time period at the time of activating cache if any request is not made during this time period. This type of expiration is useful when there are so many data to cache. So It will put those items in the cache which are frequently used in the application. So it will not going to use unnecessary memory.

Here is the example how we can set the sliding expiration and absolute expiration.

string cacheData = "The data to be cached";
//Absolute Expiration
Cache.Insert("AbsoluteCacheKey", cacheData, null,
DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(1), System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoSlidingExpiration);
//Sliding Expiration
Cache.Insert("SlidingExpiration", cacheData, null,
System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration, TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1));

In above example I have created the a string to be cache that can be any serialized data. In the absolute expiration you can see that it will expires after one minute whether its accessed or not. While in sliding expiration it will expire cache if cache is not accessed within specified time.

Hope this will help you for better understanding of asp.net caching technique. Happy programming!!!

Technorati Tags: Cache,Absolute,Sliding