Vignette understands the importance of providing a dynamic, relevant and most of all, speedy web experience for customers. It's kicking things up a notch with its latest High-Performance Delivery (HPD) software; an expansion on its Web Experience Platform. HPD delivers a unique caching technology that automatically tracks dependencies on publishing events or site changes and immediately updates the Web site cache when those changes occur, helping organizations deliver faster and richer user experiences with emphasis on speed, speed, speed!Vignette HPD works by automatically invalidating and updating the Web site cache as changes occur, setting it apart from most existing caching technologies that rely on time expiration and user interaction to regenerate cached items. HPD’s low maintenance approach helps keep those pesky content changes across multiple Web pages uniformly updated and available to site visitors in real time. And it can help reduce the amount of IT resources and infrastructure required to run a website by its straightforward setup and management features. Features of the HPD software include:* Intelligent Cache Management - HPD tracks all content associated to one or more pages or page components and detects content changes so that it can automatically regenerate dependent pages and update the cache in real-time.It can also determine if expired high volume page components require regeneration at the point changes are made, or when the new page is being requested by a user, thus minimizing the performance impact of refreshing high traffic pages. * Architecture Flexibility - HPD's highly configurable, flexible architecture supports web tier and application tier caching. HPD works with Content Delivery Network (CDN) caching solutions allowing CDNs to pull refreshed content from HPD.* Web Tier Caching (Optional-Apache only) - The system can optionally be configured to cache pages at the web tier or application server tier. Web-tier caching provides the ability to serve cached pages without interruption during planned or unplanned downtime. This reduces resource loads on the application tier and can lower expenses for enterprises. * Dynamic Component Caching - HPD can store different variations of cached pages (like different language versions or customer segmentation like gold, platinum, etc.) and allows the use of AJAX or SSI as options for dynamic caching when using Vignette Portal with Vignette Dynamic Portal Module (DPM).Vignette performed some benchmark tests to back up all their talk and apparently the results are good, indicating that Vignette HPD provides dramatic performance improvements under a variety of conditions. For instance, a number of tests were performed by Vignette in which 80 percent of a site’s Web pages were cached, and HPD provided a 450-500 percent improvement in peak sustainable throughput versus a site not running HPD. In these same tests, when 90 percent of the tested site’s Web pages were cached, the throughput improvement often exceeded 800 percent. As mentioned earlier, speedy delivery with no compromises is the name of the game. Test results also showed significant performance improvements for sites running dynamic portlets using AJAX and SSI (Server Side Include) technologies. "The benefits of HPD actually go beyond page response time and throughput," said David O’Connell senior analyst at Nucleus Research. "HPD can be used by a business analyst or even someone without a technological background in the line of business group. This enables companies to save money by off-loading tactical work from IT. More importantly, it gives line of business people more agility and independence in continually fine tuning their Web presence and adapting to business opportunities."HPD is an expansion of the Vignette Web Experience Platform, which is a suite of integrated products and services that includes site marketing tools, community tools, multichannel content delivery, and a strong enterprise foundation. Head over to Vignette for more information.
