Question

I’m new to Flex. Let’s say we have a web application that needs to download several series of data (several thousand numbers) used by one screen.

When the user leaves that screen and later returns to it (in the same session; that is, the user hasn’t logged out then logged back in), should the application fetch the original downloaded data from cache or simply download it again?

What are pros and cons of each and are there any general rules of thumb to follow when it comes to re-downloading data (e.g. again) versus simply getting it from cache? The goal would be to minimize user’s wait time as long as there’s no drawback. Thanks in advance for any comments.

Answer 1

It’s better to get it from cache than to get it from the server (as long as the data won’t be stale). Getting it from cache will free up resources on
1. the user’s computer
2. your server
3. the internet

If there is a threat that the data may be stale you can conditionally send new data to the user if the last time the data was modified is more recent than when the user got the data.

Flash is slow enough as it is, don’t make it slower.