Summary

This chapter covered the design of Enterprise Library's Caching Application Block and how to configure and develop an application to use it. The design for this application block was based primarily on the Solution Blueprint that is documented in Caching Architecture Guide for .NET Framework Applications. Additionally, it was designed to allow an application to be decoupled from the type of BackingStore that may be used for persisting cached data between application restarts.

This chapter included a detailed analysis of the design for the Caching Application Block and compared the classes and interfaces in its design to the design suggested by the Caching Architecture Guide for .NET Framework Applications Solution Blueprint. It described how the Caching Application Block provides extension points by creating new expiration policies, item removal callbacks, and BackingStore providers. Lastly, it covered how to configure the Caching Application Block and how to develop an application to use the application programming interface that this block provides.

The two key points you should understand from this chapter are that the Caching Application Block is based on the suggested best practices for a custom cache design, and that it provides a simple interface that makes it easy for an application architect to design caching capabilities into an application in an effort to ensure that the application can be tuned for optimal performance, scalability, and availability.