• Introduction
• Prerequisites To Using the NCache AppFabric Wrapper
• Running the Sample Application
• Additional Resources
• Technical Support
• Copyrights

NCache is a powerful distributed .NET caching solution. To use NCache as the caching solution to your existing AppFabric application simply follow the minimalistic instructions in this guide.

• STEP 1:

  Install AppFabric.NCache.Wrapper NuGet in your application. After installing the Nuget package in your AppFabric application, client.ncconf and config.ncconf files will be included in your project.

  The project config.ncconf file is used to configure a local in-process NCache server that can be used to test your application without have to install NCache. For out-of-process local caches and clustered caches, the config.ncconf files used in the cache servers of your cache cluster will reside in the %NCHOME%/Config folder of each of the servers. Here %NCHOME% refers to the NCache installation directory e.g. C:\Program Files\NCache.

• STEP 2:

  The client.ncconf file can be used to configure the cache client for accessing the NCache cluster. This is optional in the case where NCache installation is available on the client machine whereby the client.ncconf file will be found in %NCHOME%\Config folder.

  When the application is run, the NCache client library that comes with the NCache SDK will first look in the project folder for the client.ncconf file. Failing to find it there, it will then look in the NCache installation directory.

  In either case, the client.ncconf file is crucial to configuring the underlying NCache cache handle which will be used to perform the actual NCache CRUD operations. At the very least, the client.ncconf file should have an entry for the Id of the cache that will be used together with the IP address of atleast one of the cache servers.

  An example of a client.ncconf file can be found in the sample application.

  STEP 3:

  Make the following changes in your application .csproj and .cs files:

  • Remove the references to the following AppFabric libraries:

    - Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Client.dll
    - Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Core.dll

  • Replace the following namespaces with Alachisoft.NCache.Data.Caching in the using statements of your source files:

    - Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching
    - Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Client
    - Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Core

• STEP 4:

  Add the following keys and values to the appSettings section of your app.config or web.config file:

  • Key = “CacheId” Value = “<The name of the cache>”

    This is the Id of the cache that will be used. Make sure that the client.ncconf file has an entry with this Id so as to be able to configure a cache client to access the cache. This is required if your application is explicitly calling a named cache.

    In your app fabric application, using the DataCacheFactory GetCache(string cacheName) method, use CacheId string value as the argument.

  • Key = “Default”      Value = “<The name of the default cache>”

    This is the Id of the default cache that will be used. Make sure that the client.ncconf file has an entry with this Id so as to be able to configure a cache client to access the cache. This is required if your application is calling the default cache using the DataCacheFactory GetDefaultCache() method.

  • Key = “Expirable”      Value = “True” | “False”

    This is a Boolean value flag that determines whether the cached objects written to from the client application should have expiry set on them or not. Setting this value to True adds expiry to cached items while False will have the cached object without an expiration set on them.

  • Key = “TTL”                 Value = “<hh>:<mm>:<ss>”

    This is the expiration time set on cached items with the format of hrs : minutes : seconds. TTL has no effect if Expirable is set to False. If the Expirable key is set to True and no TTL is given, then the default expiration time of 10 min will be used on the cached items.

• STEP 5:

  Make sure that the cache with the Id given in the client.ncconf file with the given cache server configurations (IP addresses and ports) is created and running. If you are using a local in-process cache as configured in the project config.ncconf file, then that server is already available and there is no need to create and run it.

Following these steps, you should now be able to run your AppFabric application using NCache as the distributed caching solution.

In order to demonstrate the use of the NCache AppFabric Wrapper library, you can use the accompanying sample. The sample uses an in-proc local cache configured using the project config.ncconf file.

Before running the application, replace the cache server name given by the cache/server tag with you the IP address of your machine in the project client.ncconf file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <configuration>
    <ncache-server 
	connection-retries="5" 
	retry-connection-delay="0" 
	retry-interval="1" 
	command-retries="3" 
	command-retry-interval="0.1" 
	client-request-timeout="90" 
	connection-timeout="5" port="9800"/>
    <cache 
	id="myCache" 
	client-cache-id="" 
	client-cache-syncmode="optimistic" 
	default-readthru-provider="" 
	default-writethru-provider="" 
	load-balance="True" 
	enable-client-logs="False" 
	log-level="error">
    <server 
	name="**.**.**.**"/>
    </cache>
  </configuration>

If you want to test the application against a remote NCache cluster, modify the project client.ncconf file by replacing myCache value in the cache id attribute with the name of the clustered cache and replace the server name attribute with the IP address of one of the cache servers.

The complete online documentation for NCache is available at: http://www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs/#ncache

The complete programmers guide of NCache is available at: https://www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs/ncache/prog-guide/

Alachisoft © provides various sources of technical support.

• Please refer to http://www.alachisoft.com/support.html to select a support resource you find suitable for your issue.
• To request additional features in the future, or if you notice any discrepancy regarding this document, please drop an email to support@alachisoft.com.

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