Caching Patterns and Implementation

Repetitious access to remote resources, usually data, constitutes a bottleneck for many software systems. Caching is a technique that can drastically improve the performance of any database application, by avoiding multiple read operations for the same data. This paper addresses the caching problems from a pattern perspective. Both Caching and caching strategies, like primed and on demand, are presented as patterns and a pattern-based flexible caching implementation is proposed. The Caching pattern provides method of expensive resources reacquisition circumvention. Primed Cache pattern is applied in situations in which the set of required resources, or at least a part of it, can be predicted, while Demand Cache pattern is applied whenever the resources set required cannot be predicted or is unfeasible to be buffered. The advantages and disadvantages of all the caching patterns presented are also discussed, and the lessons learned are applied in the implementation of the pattern-based flexible caching solution proposed.