The ASP+ output cache is a module that provides a rich and flexible caching mechanism for caching dynamic response data.
The output cache provides increased throughput for dynamic content with little effort on the part of the content developer. Developers can use it to cache requests that would not be cacheable otherwise. The output cache can also handle cached fragments and substitution blocks (useful for ad rotators, for example). The output cache is enabled by default and will cache anything with either a valid expiration or validation policy and public cache visibility.
The output cache can also be used to cache private content. You can do this by having a handler mark the content as public before it passes through the output cache module. The content can then be cached, and you can write a module that returns the content to private before it is sent in the response.
ASP+ provides an API that exposes the cache in a type-safe manner. Much of the complexity of HTTP 1.1 caching is hidden without restricting the options available to the programmer using the API.
The following topics describe the output cache in greater detail.
See Also