Caching for dynamic layers

Question

I have over 140 layers that need to appear as overlays on basemaps(Google and OSM). My users can pick and choose which layers they want to see and store them in their preferences. While we have built the solution, the performance is very slow. These layers get served with openlayers making WMS calls to GeoServer and Postgres DB.

I tried using GeoWebCache and Tilecache but then realized that they are not all that helpful when I have dynamic layers. The XML definitions of what layers to cache are static.

What are my options here? Is there a way to cache such combinations, or do I take a different route and investigate on HTTP caching with tools like Varnish?

Answer 1

Try using http headers to control the cache in the local browser or caching proxy server and set a shorter time interval such as 5 mins or 15 mins depending on how static your data is. This way you can get some of the benefit of caching and let the http cache or http caching proxy handle the expiry.

Answer 2

If I understood correct your problem is that it is impossible to determine the combination of layers with each request as users can select any of the 140 layers and the client is sending one request for all layers combined (ie not a request for each layer).

In that case you could try fronting your WMS servers with a caching service like MapProxy or Mapcache that can build multi-layer tiles on the fly by assembling individual pre-cached tiles.