Power Pages Data Cache: What You Need to Know

Background

Power Pages websites caches the data queried from Microsoft Dataverse for scalability and performance improvements.

The server side data cache is different from client/browser side or CDN data cache. A good example of cached browser data is CSS styling. However, our focus here is server side data cache and it breaks down to configuration tables and data tables.

The Problem

For configuration tables, its data is refreshed automatically every 15 minutes and there are ways to trigger a manual cache refresh which will reflect the latest chagne immediately.

For data tables, the SLA for automatic data refresh is also 15 minutes. The data create/update/delete operations from the Power Pages websites will clear the cache immediately. I guess it is because the data updates hit the cached data repository first.

The catch is the data updates from non-Power Pages sources will NOT clear the cache immediately. So, if your Power Pages functionality is time sensitive, you have a problem here. The workaround is to create FetchXML or OData queries which are always unique. The simplest way is to use a timestamp. e.g. createdon less than now.

References

• https://oliverrodrigues365.com/2020/07/27/power-apps-portals-caching-tips/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-pages/admin/clear-server-side-cache

================================== Power Pages Data Cache: What You Need to Know

Power Pages websites cache data queried from Microsoft Dataverse to improve scalability and performance. However, the server-side data cache can sometimes cause problems if your data is realtime or time-sensitive.

What is the server-side data cache?

The server-side data cache is different from the client/browser side or CDN data cache. A good example of cached browser data is CSS styling. However, our focus here is server-side data cache, and it breaks down to configuration tables and data tables.

How does the server-side data cache work?

For configuration tables, their data is refreshed automatically every 15 minutes. There are also ways to trigger a manual cache refresh, which will reflect the latest changes immediately.

For data tables, the SLA for automatic data refresh is also 15 minutes. The data create/update/delete operations from the Power Pages websites will clear the cache immediately. This is because the data updates hit the cached data repository first.

However, the data updates from non-Power Pages sources will not clear the cache immediately. So, if your Power Pages functionality is time-sensitive, you have a problem here.

How to solve the problem

The simplest way to solve this problem is to create FetchXML or OData queries that are always unique. For example, you can use a timestamp to ensure that your queries are always returning the latest data.

<condition attribute="createdon" operator="lt" value="$now" />

Here are some additional tips for using the server-side data cache:

• Use the cache wisely. The cache can be a great way to improve performance, but it is important to use it wisely. If you are caching data that is constantly changing, you may want to consider using a different approach.
• Be aware of the limitations of the cache. The cache is not perfect, and there may be some situations where it does not work as expected.
• Monitor the cache to ensure that it is working as expected. You can use the Power Pages performance dashboard to monitor the cache hit rate and other metrics.

References

• Power Apps Portals Caching Tips
• Clear server-side cache