What is Caching? - Definition & Meaning

Definition

Caching is the temporary storage of data in a faster-accessible location so future requests are handled more quickly. It reduces the load on databases and servers and improves user experience.

Technical explanation

Caching occurs at multiple layers. Browser caching stores static assets (CSS, JS, images) locally via Cache-Control and ETag headers. CDN caching places copies on edge servers worldwide for fast delivery. Server-side caching with Redis or Memcached stores computed results or database queries in memory. Application-level caching via frameworks (Next.js ISR, React Query) caches pages or API responses. The hardest challenge is cache invalidation: determining when cached data is stale. Strategies include TTL-based invalidation (data expires after a fixed duration), event-based invalidation (cache is cleared when data changes), and stale-while-revalidate (serve stale data while fresh data is fetched in the background). Cache-aside (lazy loading) is the most common pattern: the application checks the cache first, and on a miss, queries the database and caches the result. Write-through caching writes to both cache and database simultaneously. Cache stampede prevention via locking ensures that during a mass cache miss, not all requests simultaneously hit the database.

How MG Software applies this

At MG Software, we implement a multi-layer caching strategy. Next.js ISR caches pages at build time with revalidation. Vercel's edge cache serves static content at lightning speed. We use Redis for server-side caching of API responses and database queries. This combined approach ensures fast load times across all our client projects.

Practical examples

• A news website using Next.js ISR to cache article pages and revalidate every 60 seconds, ensuring content loads quickly while remaining current.
• An e-commerce platform using Redis to cache product catalog queries so the database processes only a fraction of requests and pages load in milliseconds.
• A web application using stale-while-revalidate cache headers so users immediately see cached content while fresh data is fetched in the background.

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