What Are the Patterns and Best Practices for Caching in ASP.NET?

Question

We are working on a large legacy application and we\'re redesigning the business layer and the data layer. We believe that it is a good time to redesign the way cache is han

Answer 1

This is a big subject, but here are a few suggestions:

1. Don't cache data that's unlikely to be reused, such as user-specific data
2. Cache at all tiers: client, Silverlight (isolated storage), proxies, http.sys, IIS, ASP.NET cache object, ASP.NET per-request cache, SQL Server
3. Use SqlDependency / SqlCacheDependency when you can, but don't over-use
4. Avoid session state; use cookies instead when you can
5. Leverage page and control (fragment) output caching
6. Consider using cache validation when needed
7. Consider light-weight alternatives to the ASP.NET cache object, such as weak memory refs
8. When used correctly, SQL Server can act as a large cache

In case it helps, I cover this subject in detail in my book: Ultra-Fast ASP.NET.