Lesson plan

Edge Side Includes

Edge Side Includes (ESI) is a small markup language for edge level dynamic web content assembly. The purpose of ESI is to tackle the problem of web infrastructure scaling. It is an application of edge computing. It is fairly common for websites to have generated content. It could be because of changing content like catalogs or forums, or because of personalization. This creates a problem for caching systems. To overcome this problem a group of companies (Akamai, Art Technology Group, BEA Systems, Circadence Corporation, Digital Island, Inc., Interwoven, Inc., Open Market, whose ESI-related technology is now owned by FatWire Software, Oracle Corporation and Vignette Corporation) developed the ESI specification and submitted it to the W3C for approval. The proposal editor was Mark Nottingham. ESI Language Specification 1.0 was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for approval in August 2001. The W3C has acknowledged receipt, but has not accepted the proposal. ESI is implemented by some content delivery networks, such as Akamai, and by some caching proxy servers such as Varnish, Squid and Mongrel ESI, although many do not implement the complete specification. Akamai also adds additional features to the version they support.

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Article summary

Edge Side Includes (ESI) is a small markup language for edge level dynamic web content assembly. The purpose of ESI is to tackle the problem of web infrastructure scaling. It is an application of edge computing. It is fairly common for websites to have generated content. It could be because of changing content like catalogs or forums, or because of personalization. This creates a problem for caching systems. To overcome this problem a group of companies (Akamai, Art Technology Group, BEA Systems, Circadence Corporation, Digital Island, Inc., Interwoven, Inc., Open Market, whose ESI-related technology is now owned by FatWire Software, Oracle Corporation and Vignette Corporation) developed the ESI specification and submitted it to the W3C for approval. The proposal editor was Mark Nottingham. ESI Language Specification 1.0 was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for approval in August 2001. The W3C has acknowledged receipt, but has not accepted the proposal. ESI is implemented by some content delivery networks, such as Akamai, and by some caching proxy servers such as Varnish, Squid and Mongrel ESI, although many do not implement the complete specification. Akamai also adds additional features to the version they support.

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Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.