Question

A developer asks: In our harness rules, we have implemented a small style sheet in a small JavaScript file.  We then migrated the rules to our test system, and cleared the rules cache. 

However, users still did not pick up the style sheet and JavaScript changes.  Until they cleared their Internet Explorer caches, the changes were not effective.  Why is that?

Response

Each file making up the static content sent as an HTTP response from the Process Commander server has a timestamp, which directs that the browser should not re-request the file for a certain period of time, but use a cached version when it exists. The default setting is 24 hours. 

The pegarules.xml file can include a setting that lets you control that time period in general, or control it for specific file extensions. (Setting this value to a lower time interval increases network traffic and may slow overall user response time.)  

To learn more, run an HTTP trace on a workstation that doesn't get the changes after the specified time period. 

The HTTP trace will show that the browser sends the HTTP requests for the JS file or CSS file, but it should show an HTTP 304 code response, meaning that the content has not changed, use what is in the cache. 

The 304 code may be sent by a proxy server, but normally the proxy server does not change this type of message, so the 304 response is produced by the Process Commander server. 

By the time you make the request to the Process Commander server, you should either receive a 304 response when the cache content is valid, or you should receive the updated content in the response.