Platform Cache in Salesforce

Welcome back !!! We came back in 2020 after a great success of Apex Hours in 2019. In our very first session of 2020 we will talk about Platform Cache in Salesforce. In this session we will talk about how to Boost your app‘s performance significantly and Understand which kind of data to put in the cache. Know the obstacles when you use to the platform cache and prepare for cache misses and unexpected results. In post/session we will learn about

Learn using the platform cache can boost your app‘s performance significantly
Understand which kind of data to put in the cache
Know the obstacles when you use to the platform cache and prepare for cache misses and unexpected results

What is Platform Cache ?

Platform Cache is a memory layer that store’s Salesforce session and org data for later access. “Platform Cache” is just like a RAM for your app. With Platform Cache, your applications can run faster because they store reusable data in memory. “Platform Cache” is used to to store Static Data, complex computations and Frequently used data

Type of Platform Cache

1) Org Cache :- Org wide data for anyone in the org
2) Session Cache :- Data for a specific user stored up to 8 hours

Key Concepts

Let see the key concept of Platform Cache in Salesforce.

Simple & temporary Key-Value-Storage (Map)
Quite Easy to implement ANY cache strategy
- => but Fairly Easy to design a GOOD, sustainable strategy
By default VISIBLE and MUTABLE
- => but can be RESTRICTED and set to IMMUTABLE

Which kind of data to put in the cache

PREPARABLE – REUSABLE
Static: Not changing frequently
Frequently needed in operations
Expensive to get (or keep) (in terms of system limits)
e.g. Taxonomies, Schedules, Mappings, Conversion Rates, etc.

Considerations.

Where‘s the catch?

It‘s still a cache, not a database.
It is short lived and per default visible and mutable
Understand the key concepts of the platform cache (in particular TTL, LRU)
Expect the cache to fail you.
What’s your strategy to invalidate cache?
The Cache will go away… Schedule a Cache Rebuild < TTL
Cached items will be pushed out… Use the CacheBuilder interface
Cached data goes stale… Rebuild From Triggers
Cached items must adhere to the 100kB size limits Reduce memory footprint by using Apex Classes instead of sObject or reduce the number of queried fields
Don‘t use the cache as a fast, limit-free database.
Don‘t use it as temporary storage for transactional data
No items larger than 100kB
Cached Items are not persisted – don‘t rely on them being there.
Unless flagged as immutable, don’t rely on the integrity of cached items

Best Practices :-

Cache lists or maps of objects rather than single objects.Tradeoff: Better performance of fewer, larger operations vs. 100kB item size limit
Use a wrapper class to reduce sObject overhead
Use the fully qualified name of your cache partition
Consider using the ‘immutable‘ flag and the visibility enum