One of the most important factors in
building high-performance, scalable Web applications is the ability to store
items, whether data objects, pages, or parts of a page, in memory the initial
time they are requested. You can cache, or store, these items on the Web server
or other software in the request stream, such as the proxy server or browser.
This allows you to avoid recreating information that satisfied a previous
request, particularly information that demands significant processor time or
other resources. ASP.NET caching allows you to use a number of techniques to
store page output or application data across HTTP requests and reuse it.
ASP.NET provides two types of caching
that you can use to create high-performance Web applications.
The first is output caching, which
allows you to store dynamic page and user control responses on any HTTP 1.1
cache-capable device in the output stream, from the originating server to the
requesting browser. On subsequent requests, the page or user control code is
not executed; the cached output is used to satisfy the request.
he second type of caching is application
data caching, which you can use to programmatically store arbitrary objects,
such as application data, in server memory so that your application can save
the time and resources it takes to recreate them.