Generalized Esp caching mechanism

To prevent esp requesting repeated requests for the same information, e.g. a workunit/graph refresh or file view etc., it would be good if there was a general Esp request cache.

The general idea would be that an identical URL or SOAP request would expected to give an identical reply if within a certain timeframe, and therefore would be most efficiently served if a cache kept the reply instead having to ask services to regenerate it.

I suspect the cache would need to handle different entry timeouts depending on the request types.

A cache like this would prevent load on backend services which are often hit for the same information quickly from the same client or multiple different users on different clients.

This feels like something that has been discussed before, so perhaps there's already a issue for it? afishbeck wangkx richardkchapman