Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

March 8, 2012

Stash

Filed under: Cache Invalidation,node-js,Redis — Patrick Durusau @ 8:49 pm

Stash by Nate Kohari.

From the post:

Stash is a graph-based cache for Node.js powered by Redis.

Warning! Stash is just a mental exercise at this point. Feedback is very much appreciated, but using it in production may cause you to contract ebola or result in global thermonuclear war.

Overview

“There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things.”
— Phil Karlton

One of the most difficult parts about caching is managing dependencies between cache entries. In order to reap the benefits of caching, you typically have to denormalize the data that’s stored in the cache. Since data from child items is then stored within parent items, it can be challenging to figure out what entries to invalidate in the cache in response to changes in data.

As Nate says, a thought experiment but an interesting one.

From a topic map perspective, I don’t know that I would consider cache invalidation and naming things as two distinct problems. Or rather, the same problem under different constraints.

If you don’t think “cache invalidation” is related to naming, what sort of problem is it when a person’s name changes upon marriage? Isn’t a stored record “cached?” May not be cache in the sense of the cache in an online service or chip, but those are the special cases aren’t they?

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