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The entry cache is a mechanism that uses system memory for holding entries in a manner that may be quickly accessed so that it is not necessary to decode them from the database whenever they are needed. Entry caching mechanisms are particularly effective when used with applications that access the same entry multiple times in a sequence of operations (for example, an application which first searches to find a user entry and then binds as that user to verify a password, which is a very common usage pattern).

The entry cache may be used either instead of or in addition to the server's database cache. The database cache generally uses a more compact representation of the data, but the entry cache generally holds data in a format that can be more efficiently used by the server.

This test reports measures pertaining to the entry caches of the SunOne Directory server.

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Cache_hit_ratio	The ratio of the number of entry cache tries to successful entry cache lookups.	Percent	This number is based on the total lookups and hits since the last measurement period of the test. The closer this value is to 100% the better. Whenever a search operation attempts to find an entry that is not resident in the entry cache, the directory server has to perform a disk access to obtain the entry. Thus, as this ratio drops towards zero, the number of disk accesses increases and directory server search performance drops.
Entries_present	The number of directory entries currently resident in the entry cache.	Number