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Caching Fundamentals

3 posts · Feb 2022 – Jul 2025

What this trail covers

This post introduces application-level caching in Laravel, demonstrating how to reduce database load and improve response times by storing frequently accessed data in application memory. It covers the use of Laravel's `Cache::remember()` method for retrieving and storing cached data, and highlights the significant performance gains achievable compared to direct database queries. The post also touches on different cache drivers (file, Redis, Memcached) and the importance of clearing the cache.

All PlanetScale trails
  1. CachingThis post provides a foundational explanation of caching principles, including the trade-offs between speed, cost, and capacity. It details the concept of hit rate and its importance, illustrates caching in computer hardware (CPU caches, RAM, hard drives), and explains temporal locality (recency bias) and spatial locality (prefetching related data). It also introduces FIFO and LRU replacement policies with interactive visualizations.
  2. Distributed caching systems and MySQLThis post explores backend caching, how to implement it, how caching works with MySQL, and potential issues to watch out for. It details two common caching patterns: look-aside and look-through. It also discusses potential issues like inconsistent data and the thundering herd problem, offering solutions such as cache expiration and cache leases.
  3. Introduction to Laravel cachingThis post demonstrates the practical application of caching in a Laravel application to optimize database query performance. It introduces the `Cache::remember()` method for implementing application-level caching, showing how to store query results for a specified duration to reduce database load. The post quantifies the performance improvement, showing a reduction in response time from seconds to milliseconds after implementing caching. It also provides instructions for setting up a PlanetScale database for the demonstration and discusses the trade-offs of different cache drivers.