On Reducing Dynamic Web Page Construction Times

Many web sites incorporate dynamic web pages to deliver customized contents to their users. However, dynamic pages result in increased user response times due to their construction overheads. In this paper, we consider mechanisms for reducing these overheads by utilizing the excess capacity with which web servers are typically provisioned. Specifically, we present a caching technique that integrates fragment caching with anticipatory page pre-generation in order to deliver dynamic pages faster during normal operating situations. A feedback mechanism is used to tune the page pre-generation process to match the current system load. The experimental results from a detailed simulation study of our technique indicate that, given a fixed cache budget, page construction speedups of more than fifty percent can be consistently achieved as compared to a pure fragment caching approach.