19.1. SharePoint Caching Options
SharePoint's architecture is set up such that most if not all site content lives inside the SharePoint content database. Not only is the content in the database, but so are a considerable amount of layout files such as master pages, page layouts, style sheets, and images. With so much content in the database, the SharePoint WFE servers are very chatty with the database server. This results in a considerable amount of traffic between the database(s) and WFE server(s). Aside from pulling data directly from the database(s), SharePoint also pulls data from across lists and sites for such things as navigation and cross-list and site queries for the Content Query Web Part (CWQP). All this data is then used on the SharePoint WFE servers to construct the pages, which are built and compiled by ASP.NET 2.0 to create the rendered HTML output that is returned back to the requestor.
WSS 3.0 leverages some of the caching techniques provided in ASP.NET 2.0 to optimize data retrieval and page processing. MOSS 2007 takes SharePoint's performance optimizations a step further in three areas: output caching, object caching, and disk-based BLOB caching. Each of these techniques is exclusive to MOSS 2007 and can be leveraged within Publishing sites to squeeze the most performance out of a site.
Each of the caching options has an extensive administrative interface associated with it. Instead of documenting the administration screens and options in a developer book, ...
