I have a table of non trivial size on a DB2 database that is updated X times a day per user input in another application. This table is also read by my web-app to display some info to another set of users. I have a large number of users on my web app and they need to do lots of fuzzy string lookups with data that is up-to-the-minute accurate. So, I need a server side cache to do my fuzzy logic on and to keep the DB from getting hammered.
So, what’s the best option? I would hate to pull the entire table every minute when the data changes so rarely. I could setup a trigger to update a timestamp of a smaller table and poll that to see if I need refresh my cache, but that seems hacky to.
Ideally I would like to have DB2 tell my web-app when something changes, or at least provide a very lightweight mechanism to detect data level changes.
I think if your web application is running in WebSphere, setting up MQ would be a pretty good solution.
You could write triggers that use the MQ Series routines to add things to a queue, and your web app could subscribe to the queue and listen for updates.
If your web app is not in WebSphere then you could still look at this option but it might be more difficult.