Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to improve the performance of your ASP.NET applications by taking advantage of caching. In the first part of this chapter, you learned how to use each of the different types of caching technologies supported by the ASP.NET Framework.

First, you learned how to use Page Output Caching to cache the entire rendered contents of a page. You learned how to create different cached versions of the same page when the page is requested with different parameters, headers, and browsers. You also learned how to remove pages programmatically from the Page Output Cache. Finally, we discussed how you can define Cache Profiles in a web configuration file.

Next, you learned how to use Partial Page Caching to apply different caching policies to different regions in a page. You learned how to use post-cache substitution to dynamically inject content into a page that has been output cached. You also learned how to use User Controls to cache different areas of a page.

We also discussed how you can cache data by using the different DataSource controls. You learned how to enable caching when working with the SqlDataSource, ObjectDataSource, and XmlDataSource controls.

Next, you learned how to use the Cache object to cache items programmatically. You learned how to add items to the cache with different expiration policies and dependencies. You also learned how to configure the maximum size of the cache in the web configuration file.

Finally, we discussed SQL cache dependencies. You learned how to use SQL cache dependencies to reload database data in the cache automatically when the data in the underlying database changes. You learned how to use both Polling and Push SQL cache dependencies with Page Output Caching, DataSource Caching, and the Cache object.