Optimising Pages for Speed using XML Data Island Caching

Caching can dramatically improve the speed of page loading and reduce server load on pages using data islands and should be used on pages which do not need to give individual results to the site visitor.

The Procedure

1. Add cacheInMin to all data island xsls and xml source if appropriate.
2. If xmlsource url is an aspx page (e.g. rss.aspx) then will not normally need any sitekit internal parameters so can add skparamsreqd="" and then add the cache in mins to xmlsource. The reason for the skparamsreqd attribute is that if you do not set it then Sitekit will always supply Sitekit_SID – which is different for each user – therefore each call will have different parameter values and there will never be any caching as no two request will ever be the same.
3.  If a webservice then as it may require one or more sitekit internal parameters you need to be more careful – see 2 examples below:

Examples of Optimised XML Data Islands

<xmlconsumer>
<xmlsource url="http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/rss.aspx?id=943" skparamsreqd="" cacheInMin="60" />
<xslsource url="http://xsl.sitekit.net/Hi-arts/EditorialNewsFeed.xslt" cacheInMin="60" />
</xmlconsumer>

<xmlconsumer>
<xmlsource url=http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/rss.aspx?id=836” skparamsreqd="" cacheInMin="60" />
<xslsource url=http://clients.gael.net/xml/hi-arts/Hiarts_cartoon_news.xsl” cacheInMin="60" />
</xmlconsumer>

<xmlconsumer>
<xmlsource url=http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/rss.aspx?id=729&amp;reflocid=hiacg5” skparamsreqd="" cacheInMin="60" />
<xslsource url="http://clients.gael.net/xml/hi-arts/Hiarts_review_news.xsl" cacheInMin="60" />
</xmlconsumer>

<xmlconsumer>
<xmlsource url=http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/rss.aspx?id=598” skparamsreqd="" cacheInMin="60" />
<xslsource url=http://clients.gael.net/xml/hi-arts/Hiarts_journal_news.xsl“ cacheInMin="60" />
</xmlconsumer>