Architecture

Cache-aside

App reads cache; on miss reads source and populates.

In plain terms

The most common caching pattern. Simple to reason about; staleness is the cost.

Origin

Pattern named in Microsoft's Cloud Design Patterns documentation (~2014). The implementation itself is older — every Memcached + database combination is implicitly cache-aside.

Where it shows up in production

Facebook + Memcache The 2013 NSDI paper "Scaling Memcache at Facebook" is the canonical cache-aside paper at planet scale.
Most Postgres + Redis stacks App reads Redis; on miss reads Postgres and writes Redis. Default starting point for read-heavy services.

On Semicolony

Handbook caching strategies

Sources & further reading

Paper Nishtala et al. — Scaling Memcache at Facebook (NSDI 2013)
Docs Microsoft — Cache-aside pattern

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