Memcached is an open-source and free in-memory object caching system that has high performance and is distributed and generic in nature. It is mainly used for speeding the dynamic web applications by reducing the database load.
Memcached can be used in the following cases :
* Profile caching in social networking domains like Facebook.
* Web page caching in the content aggregation domain.
* Profile tracking in Ad targeting domain.
* Session caching in e-commerce, gaming, and entertainment domain.
* Database query optimization and scaling in the Location-based services domain.
Benefits of Memcached :
* Using Memcached speeds up the application processes by reducing the hits to a database and reducing the I/O access.
* It helps in determining what steps are more frequently followed and helps in deciding what to cache.
Some of the drawbacks of using Memcached are :
* In case of failure, the data is lost as it is neither a persistent data store nor a database.
* It is not an application-specific cache.
* Large objects cannot be cached.
