Tech Explained: What is Memcached?
What is Memcached?
Memcached (hereinafter referred to as MC) is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system. By maintaining a unified, massive hash table in memory, it can store data in various formats, including images, videos, files, and database query results.
Why Use MC?
Data is a wonderful thing, but it struggles to respond quickly during high-frequency read/write operations. For large volumes of data that aren’t modified frequently, using MC is an excellent choice. You can think of MC as a giant dictionary: whatever data you need, you just provide a key and it instantly returns the value.
Where MC Is Not Suitable
Everything has two sides, and MC is no exception—it is by no means a magic bullet. Because it stores data using hashing, data retrieval can only be done through exact key matching. Therefore, never expect it to perform flexible queries like a relational database.