go-sdk/mcp/schema_cache_test.go
Sam Morrow c2c7edc3f0
perf: add schema caching to avoid repeated reflection (#685)
## Summary

This PR adds schema caching that dramatically reduces the cost of tool
registration in stateless server patterns.

**Contributors:** Thanks to @omgitsads and @almaleksia for collaborating
on and researching this solution!

## Problem

In stateless deployments like `github/github-mcp-server`, a new
`*mcp.Server` is created for each incoming request. This means `AddTool`
is called repeatedly for the same tools, causing:

1. **For typed handlers**: `jsonschema.ForType()` reflection is called
every time
2. **For pre-defined schemas**: `schema.Resolve()` is called every time

## Solution

Add a `schemaCache` that stores:
- Schemas by `reflect.Type` (for auto-generated schemas from typed
handlers)
- Resolved schemas by schema pointer (for pre-defined schemas)

The cache is:
- Concurrent-safe using `sync.Map`
- Unbounded (typical MCP servers have <100 tools)
- Global (lives across server instances)

## Benchmark Results

```
BenchmarkAddToolTypedHandler-22          977080    1223 ns/op     1208 B/op    21 allocs/op
BenchmarkAddToolTypedHandlerNoCache-22    6764  161463 ns/op    39262 B/op  1072 allocs/op
```

| Metric | With Cache | Without Cache | Improvement |
|--------|------------|---------------|-------------|
| Time | 1,223 ns/op | 161,463 ns/op | **132x faster** |
| Allocations | 21 allocs | 1,072 allocs | **51x fewer** |
| Memory | 1,208 B/op | 39,262 B/op | **32x less** |

## Files Changed

- `mcp/schema_cache.go` - New cache implementation
- `mcp/server.go` - Modified `setSchema` to use cache
- `mcp/schema_cache_test.go` - Unit tests for caching behavior
- `mcp/schema_cache_benchmark_test.go` - Benchmarks

## Impact for Integrators

**Automatic** - no code changes required. Integrators using:
- Typed handlers (`AddTool[In, Out]`) → cache by type
- Pre-defined schemas (`Tool{InputSchema: schema}`) → cache by pointer

Both patterns benefit from caching after the first call.

---

## Real-World Performance Validation

The following benchmarks were conducted using `github/github-mcp-server`
(a production MCP server with ~130 tools) to validate the performance
impact in a real-world scenario.

### Test Environment
- **Server:** github-mcp-server (stateless HTTP deployment)
- **Tools registered per request:** ~130 tools
- **Test methodology:** Python benchmark client, 30 iterations
(latency), 100 iterations (stress)
- **Date:** December 4, 2025

### Configurations Tested

| Configuration | Description |
|--------------|-------------|
| **main (mcp-go)** | Original implementation using mcp-go library |
| **go-sdk (no cache)** | go-sdk WITHOUT schema caching (broken) |
| **go-sdk (with cache)** | go-sdk WITH this PR's schema caching fix
|

### Latency Test Results (n=30)

#### Operation: `initialize`

| Configuration | P50 | P99 | Status |
|--------------|-----|-----|--------|
| main (mcp-go) | 11.48ms | 14.00ms | ✅ Baseline |
| go-sdk (no cache) | 20.47ms | 25.30ms | 🔴 **+78% REGRESSION** |
| go-sdk (with cache) | 10.36ms | 14.33ms | ✅ **FIXED (-10%)** |

#### Operation: `tools/list`

| Configuration | P50 | P99 | Status |
|--------------|-----|-----|--------|
| main (mcp-go) | 13.46ms | 22.47ms | ✅ Baseline |
| go-sdk (no cache) | 22.98ms | 29.11ms | 🔴 **+71% REGRESSION** |
| go-sdk (with cache) | 14.15ms | 15.91ms | ✅ **FIXED (+5%)** |

#### Operation: `prompts/list`

| Configuration | P50 | P99 | Status |
|--------------|-----|-----|--------|
| main (mcp-go) | 11.56ms | 13.81ms | ✅ Baseline |
| go-sdk (no cache) | 21.00ms | 26.42ms | 🔴 **+82% REGRESSION** |
| go-sdk (with cache) | 10.77ms | 15.25ms | ✅ **FIXED (-7%)** |

### Stress Test Results (n=100)

| Configuration | P50 (initialize) | P50 (tools/list) | P50
(prompts/list) |

|--------------|------------------|------------------|-------------------|
| main (mcp-go) | 12.06ms | 14.30ms | 11.34ms |
| go-sdk (no cache) | 20.06ms | 23.44ms | 19.59ms |
| go-sdk (with cache) | **11.83ms** | **14.58ms** | **11.05ms** |

### Memory/Allocation Comparison (from pprof)

| Configuration | Total Allocations | Comparison |
|--------------|-------------------|------------|
| main (mcp-go) | 355.91 MB | Baseline |
| go-sdk (no cache) | **1208.70 MB** | 🔴 **3.4x MORE allocations** |

#### Top Allocation Sources - go-sdk WITHOUT cache (broken)

| Function | Size | % | Issue |
|----------|------|---|-------|
| `jsonschema.UnmarshalJSON` | 324.60 MB | 27% | 🚨 Schema re-parsing |
| `encoding/json.Unmarshal` | 341.10 MB | 28% | JSON deserialization |
| `jsonschema.resolve` | 219.51 MB | 18% | 🚨 Schema re-resolution |
| `jsonschema.MarshalJSON` | 92.52 MB | 8% | Schema JSON encoding |

### Root Cause Analysis

The `google/jsonschema-go` library regenerates JSON schemas on every
request instead of caching them. In a server with ~130 tools, this
causes:
- **70-80% latency regression** on all MCP operations
- **3.4x more memory allocations** per request
- **~70% of all allocations** are schema-related operations

### Key Findings

1. ✅ **REGRESSION CONFIRMED:** go-sdk without schema caching is 70-80%
slower than mcp-go
2. ✅ **FIX VERIFIED:** Schema caching restores performance to baseline
(or better)
3. ✅ **MEMORY IMPACT:** 3.4x reduction in allocations with caching
4. ✅ **PRODUCTION READY:** Fixed version performs equivalently to mcp-go
baseline

---------

Co-authored-by: Adam Holt <4619+omgitsads@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Ksenia Bobrova <1885174+almaleksia@users.noreply.github.com>
2026-01-20 20:16:46 -05:00

208 lines
5 KiB
Go

// Copyright 2025 The Go MCP SDK Authors. All rights reserved.
// Use of this source code is governed by an MIT-style
// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
package mcp
import (
"context"
"reflect"
"testing"
"github.com/google/jsonschema-go/jsonschema"
)
func TestSchemaCacheByType(t *testing.T) {
cache := NewSchemaCache()
type TestInput struct {
Name string `json:"name"`
}
rt := reflect.TypeFor[TestInput]()
if _, _, ok := cache.getByType(rt); ok {
t.Error("expected cache miss for new type")
}
schema := &jsonschema.Schema{Type: "object"}
resolved, err := schema.Resolve(nil)
if err != nil {
t.Fatalf("failed to resolve schema: %v", err)
}
cache.setByType(rt, schema, resolved)
gotSchema, gotResolved, ok := cache.getByType(rt)
if !ok {
t.Error("expected cache hit after set")
}
if gotSchema != schema {
t.Error("schema mismatch")
}
if gotResolved != resolved {
t.Error("resolved schema mismatch")
}
}
func TestSchemaCacheBySchema(t *testing.T) {
cache := NewSchemaCache()
schema := &jsonschema.Schema{
Type: "object",
Properties: map[string]*jsonschema.Schema{
"query": {Type: "string"},
},
}
if _, ok := cache.getBySchema(schema); ok {
t.Error("expected cache miss for new schema")
}
resolved, err := schema.Resolve(nil)
if err != nil {
t.Fatalf("failed to resolve schema: %v", err)
}
cache.setBySchema(schema, resolved)
gotResolved, ok := cache.getBySchema(schema)
if !ok {
t.Error("expected cache hit after set")
}
if gotResolved != resolved {
t.Error("resolved schema mismatch")
}
// Different pointer should miss (cache uses pointer identity).
schema2 := &jsonschema.Schema{Type: "object"}
if _, ok = cache.getBySchema(schema2); ok {
t.Error("expected cache miss for different schema pointer")
}
}
func TestSetSchemaCachesGeneratedSchemas(t *testing.T) {
cache := NewSchemaCache()
type TestInput struct {
Query string `json:"query"`
}
rt := reflect.TypeFor[TestInput]()
var sfield1 any
var rfield1 *jsonschema.Resolved
if _, err := setSchema[TestInput](&sfield1, &rfield1, cache); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("setSchema failed: %v", err)
}
cachedSchema, cachedResolved, ok := cache.getByType(rt)
if !ok {
t.Fatal("schema not cached after first setSchema call")
}
var sfield2 any
var rfield2 *jsonschema.Resolved
if _, err := setSchema[TestInput](&sfield2, &rfield2, cache); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("setSchema failed on second call: %v", err)
}
if sfield2.(*jsonschema.Schema) != cachedSchema {
t.Error("expected cached schema to be returned")
}
if rfield2 != cachedResolved {
t.Error("expected cached resolved schema to be returned")
}
}
func TestSetSchemaCachesProvidedSchemas(t *testing.T) {
cache := NewSchemaCache()
schema := &jsonschema.Schema{
Type: "object",
Properties: map[string]*jsonschema.Schema{
"query": {Type: "string"},
},
}
var sfield1 any = schema
var rfield1 *jsonschema.Resolved
if _, err := setSchema[map[string]any](&sfield1, &rfield1, cache); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("setSchema failed: %v", err)
}
cachedResolved, ok := cache.getBySchema(schema)
if !ok {
t.Fatal("resolved schema not cached after first setSchema call")
}
if rfield1 != cachedResolved {
t.Error("expected same resolved schema")
}
var sfield2 any = schema
var rfield2 *jsonschema.Resolved
if _, err := setSchema[map[string]any](&sfield2, &rfield2, cache); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("setSchema failed on second call: %v", err)
}
if rfield2 != cachedResolved {
t.Error("expected cached resolved schema to be returned")
}
}
func TestSetSchemaNilCache(t *testing.T) {
type TestInput struct {
Query string `json:"query"`
}
var sfield1 any
var rfield1 *jsonschema.Resolved
if _, err := setSchema[TestInput](&sfield1, &rfield1, nil); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("setSchema failed: %v", err)
}
var sfield2 any
var rfield2 *jsonschema.Resolved
if _, err := setSchema[TestInput](&sfield2, &rfield2, nil); err != nil {
t.Fatalf("setSchema failed on second call: %v", err)
}
if sfield1 == nil || sfield2 == nil {
t.Error("expected schemas to be generated")
}
if rfield1 == nil || rfield2 == nil {
t.Error("expected resolved schemas to be generated")
}
}
func TestAddToolWithSharedCache(t *testing.T) {
cache := NewSchemaCache()
type GreetInput struct {
Name string `json:"name" jsonschema:"the name to greet"`
}
type GreetOutput struct {
Message string `json:"message"`
}
handler := func(ctx context.Context, req *CallToolRequest, in GreetInput) (*CallToolResult, GreetOutput, error) {
return &CallToolResult{}, GreetOutput{Message: "Hello, " + in.Name}, nil
}
tool := &Tool{
Name: "greet",
Description: "Greet someone",
}
// Simulate stateless server pattern: new server per request, shared cache.
for i := 0; i < 3; i++ {
s := NewServer(&Implementation{Name: "test", Version: "1.0"}, &ServerOptions{
SchemaCache: cache,
})
AddTool(s, tool, handler)
}
rt := reflect.TypeFor[GreetInput]()
if _, _, ok := cache.getByType(rt); !ok {
t.Error("expected schema to be cached by type after multiple AddTool calls")
}
}