Caching Strategies: When, Where, and How to Cache
The fastest request is one you don’t make. Caching trades storage for speed, serving precomputed results instead of recalculating them. But caching done wrong is worse than no caching—stale data, inconsistencies, and debugging nightmares. When to Cache Cache when: Data is read more often than written Computing the result is expensive Slight staleness is acceptable The same data is requested repeatedly Don’t cache when: Data changes constantly Every request needs fresh data Storage cost exceeds compute savings Cache invalidation is harder than recomputation Cache Placement Client-Side Cache Browser cache, mobile app cache, CDN edge cache: ...