Custom Caching Overview
You can use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) caching options to optimize the performance of your sites. MOSS 2007 uses ASP.NET 2.0 caching options as well as caching functionality that the Office team designed specifically for MOSS.
The caching topics describe caching technologies available in MOSS 2007 and how and when to configure caching options to maximize performance and reduce latency. You can customize caching at the page level through output caching; customize caching options for individual objects such as Web Parts, navigation actions, and site map provision through object caching; and control if, how, and when your site uses disk-based caching to reduce latency and improve rendering times for image, sound files, and custom code such as cascading style sheets (.css) and JavaScript (.js) files. The following table shows the types of caching available in MOSS 2007 and what they do.
| Use this type of caching… | At the… | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Individual page level |
Includes extending caching using VaryByCustomString |
|
Individual Web Part control, field control, and content level |
Includes cross-list query caching and navigation caching |
|
Individual binary large object (BLOB) level and caches images, sound, movies, and code |
Supports .gif, .jpg, .js, .css, and other image, sound, and code files that are stored as binary large objects |
By building cache-aware controls, extending caching in ways appropriate for your site deployment, building navigation providers that always use the object cache, creating content queries that use the Content By Query cache, and creating server controls for your master page and page layouts that minimize database roundtrips, you can vastly improve the performance of your MOSS deployment.
Developers should note that MOSS supplies dedicated caches for navigation nodes and content returned from potentially expensive retrieval operations such as standard WSS queries run by using an SPQuery object and cross-site queries run by using an SPSiteDataQuery object.
Note
Although MOSS 2007 doesn't enable you to use ASP.NET output caching directives in the same way you can in a standard ASP.NET page, it provides a more robust framework to achieve the same results.
See Also
Tasks
How to: Extend Caching by Using the VaryByCustom Event Handler