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I work with performance-critical software that often requires some form of cache to function efficiently. However, there is also often a need to constrain memory usage, so I set out to create a high-performance cache with a maximum size.

An article showing how to create quick, "easy to use" views of session state and cache.

NCache is a high performance in-memory object caching solution for mission critical .NET applications with real-time data access needs. NCache not only lets you cache read-only data but also complex transactional data with relationships. As a result, your application can cache most of its data and dramatically improve performance.

Nearly every application needs to cache data. While you're probably familiar wth the caching functionality built into ASP.NET, the Enterprise Library Caching Block provides in-memory, file-based, or database caching storage for all your other .NET applications.

One of the most sure-fire ways to improve a web application's performance is to employ caching. Caching takes some expensive operation and stores its results in a quickly accessible location. ASP.NET version 1.0 introduced two flavors of caching:

• Output Caching - caches the entire rendered markup of an ASP.NET web page or User Control for a specified duration.
• Data Caching - a programmatically-accessible, in-memory data cache for storing objects in the web server's memory.

For a more in-depth discussion on ASP.NET 1.x's caching capabilities, refer to Scott McFarland's Caching with ASP.NET and Steve Smith's ASP.NET Caching: Techniques and Best Practices articles.

In ASP.NET 2.0, the caching system has been extended to include SQL cache dependencies, cache profiles, and post-cache substitution for output cached pages. The Caching for Performance section of the ASP.NET 2.0 QuickStarts provides a good overview of ASP.NET 2.0's caching options. This article explores output caching in ASP.NET 2.0, starting with an overview of output caching and followed by a detailed look at creating pages that include both cached and non-cached markup using fragment caching and post-cache substitution techniques.

ASP.NET Output Caching features help us to develop performance oriented web sites. No doubt that output caching reduces server side event processing. However, in the process it bypasses the entire server side processing. That means after the first request the page becomes static in terms of its contents for the entire cache duration. In some situations this architecture poses problems of its own. Recognizing these problems Microsoft introduced a new web server control called Substitution control in ASP.NET 2.0. The Substitution control allows you to dynamically change a part of the entire cached output. This substitution happens on the server and you can control what to substitute in the output.

The Caching Application Block's provider mechanism lets you create a custom provider that stores cached data anywhere you want. It was this that made me wonder if it was possible to cache data within or through a web service, which would allow the provider to cache its data almost anywhere—remotely or locally—without having to write specific code that is directly integrated within Enterprise Library.

The principle is simple enough. Instead of having the backing store provider within the Caching Application Block interact directly with the backing store (the usual approach, as implemented in the Isolated Storage provider and Database provider), the backing store provider simply packages up the data and sends it to a web service..

If you're not taking advantage of Active Directory, you should be. Learn the benefits from Keith Brown.

There are a lot of ways to improve performance in web applications. One of the simplest but most effective methods is to cache images on the client. In this article I would like to show how we implemented image caching for our DotNetNuke website.

Explains the concept of Global Assembly Cache, how to create assembly without Visual Studio .NET and how to view assembly's content.