Data cache vs session object in ASP.Net

Question

Should dynamic business objects for a site be stored in the users session or use ASP.Net caching (objects such as orders, profile information etc)?

I have worked wi

Answer 1

Although you can store your business object in Cache, but Cache is designed for performance improvement not state management. Imagine you that you have a process of getting 1000 record from database (and it take about 3 seconds) and you will need it for a few minutes. You can store your objects in Cache and set expire date, priority and dependency to it (like SqlDependency or FileDependency), so for next requests you can use Cached data instead of retriving it from database. You can store your object in Session but you can not set dependency for Session by default. Also Cache has a unique behavior that when system needs memory it will release objects from cache depending on its priority. Cache objects are global to Application and shared between all users but Session is not shared and it's usable for each user (Session).