SAP Portal cache's and How to clear .

The SAP Portal has several caches to speed up the portal experience and to minimize the impact of the portal on the Server (load time, database, PCD lookups, etc.). This has many benefits, but it complicates debugging for developers and support staff. There, you don`t want to see cached results, you need to get the actual changes.

End-user

When the user is accessing the portal for the 1st time, the browser loads all necessary files and caches them locally. 1st access with no cache:

With every subsequent access the browser loads content from the local cache. This speeds up the content loading time for the user.

To enforce your browser to actually load all the content from the portal, refresh the page with CTRL+F5.

As you will lose your navigation context and to be sure that no old content is on the computer, empty the local browser cache. In this cache the browser stores images, HTML and Javascript. To empty this cache:

The next caches are located on the portal side.

Portal Caches

The main portal caches are:

• Navigation cache
• PCD cache
• Portal runtime cache
• Database cache
• UME cache

Navigation cache

The navigation cache is responsible for caching the navigation of the portal, starting from the “Entry Point” level. As it caches some navigation data like title, merge ID, sort priority: if you make a change to the navigation of the user, the change might not be immediately visible. To clear the Navigation cache:
System Administration -> Navigation

Clear the cache for the ROLES connector.

PRT cache

The content admin can enable portal content to be cached in the memory by the portal. This content will be stored in the portal runtime cache. This cache is actually storing iView content.

If this cache is enabled, the content is cached in the Portal Runtime cache. As an example, when the masthead application is configured to use the cache level: “Shared”, all the users will see the user name of the first user that accessed the portal. To clear the PRT cache:

http:// server:port /irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.portal.prt.cache.PRTRegionMemoryClear

PCD cache

The portal stores PCD content (roles, worksets structure, page structure). If you added, deleted or changed an iView and this change isn`t visible, clear this cache. To clear the PCD cache:

System Administration -> Support -> Support Desk -> Portal Content Directory -> PCD Administration

Database cache

The PCD object configuration is stored in the database of the portal. Because reading the configuration is a performance intensive task, the portal uses the DB cache to minimize to load on the DB. To enforce the portal to reload the configuration of the objects from the DB, clear the DB cache:

http:// server:port /irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.portal.prt.cache.PRTRegionDBClear

UME cache

The user assignments are stored in the UME. You should clear this cache when you assign an user to a new role and the navigation doesn`t get actualized and clearing the other caches isn`t solving the problem, or when you assign a security role to an user and isn`t getting the permissions. To clear this cache:

System Administration -> System Configuration -> UME Configuration -> Support -> Invalidate cluster wide cache

The next caches are independent from the portal. 

NetWeaver AS Java cache

After cleaning the above mentioned portal caches, there is still the possibility that the change isn`t applied for the end-user. The NetWeaver AS Java has a cache that stores static files.

HTTP Provider Cache

This is the cache for static files like CSS, Javascript, Images, HTML. You`ll have to clear this cache when you redeploy an application and receive Javascript errors. To clear this cache:

Visual Administrator -> Cluster -> Server # -> Services -> HTTP Provider

Reverse Proxy cache

Depending on your infrastructure, you may also have a reverse proxy between the portal and the user. If the changes won`t get applied, don`t forget to also clear this cache.