Build Web Application Acceleration caching policies with compression and purge rules.
Last verified: May 2026
Build Web Application Acceleration caching policies with compression and purge rules.
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compartmentIddisplayNamepolicyConfigOutput will appear here...The builder constructs OCI Web Application Acceleration (WAA) policy configurations with: caching rules (per-URL-pattern with TTL, response-status-based caching control, header-based cache-key customization), compression settings (gzip/brotli, included mime types), and purging rules (cache invalidation API hooks). Output is generated as oci waa commands and Terraform oci_waa_web_app_acceleration_policy resources.
OCI Web Application Acceleration (WAA) improves web application performance by caching content at the edge, compressing responses, and optimizing connection handling. WAA policies define caching rules, compression settings, and purging strategies for content served through OCI load balancers. This builder helps you configure WAA policies with cache control rules, content compression settings, cache purging configurations, and integration with OCI Load Balancer backends.
Your team's e-commerce site has ALB + Compute backends. Page load times are 2-3 seconds, dominated by uncompressed HTML/CSS/JS over the wire and DB queries hitting the origin for every request. The builder generates a WAA policy: gzip compression for all text mime types, cache static assets (CSS/JS/images) for 1 year with versioned URLs, cache HTML for 5 minutes, bypass cache for /api/* and /checkout/*. After deploy, page load times drop to 500-800ms; backend request rate drops 70%; bandwidth costs drop 65% from compression alone.
Compression is the highest-ROI WAA setting. gzip-compressing text content (HTML, CSS, JS, JSON, XML) typically reduces bandwidth by 60-80%. The CPU cost is negligible on modern hardware. Enable compression for all text mime types before optimizing anything else.
Cache static assets aggressively (1 year TTL with versioned filenames), cache HTML conservatively (5 minutes max), bypass cache for API responses entirely. The naive 'set TTL=1 hour for everything' approach either over-caches dynamic content or under-caches truly static assets.
WAA is regional caching — for global distribution, you still need a CDN in front. Use WAA when your audience is primarily within one OCI region (regional product, B2B with known geography). For genuinely global traffic, layer a CDN (Akamai, Cloudflare) over OCI Load Balancer + WAA.
WAA operates at the OCI Load Balancer level rather than at globally distributed edge points of presence (PoPs). It provides caching and compression for traffic that already passes through your load balancer, reducing origin server load and improving response times. A CDN distributes content globally across many edge locations. WAA is suited for applications primarily serving a single region, while a CDN is better for globally distributed audiences.
WAA can cache any HTTP response based on the URL pattern, HTTP method, response headers (Cache-Control), and custom rules. For dynamic content, you can configure short TTLs (seconds to minutes) to reduce origin load while keeping content relatively fresh. Use cache key customization to include query parameters or headers that differentiate responses. Truly dynamic, per-user content should bypass the cache using no-cache rules.
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