PRO: Designing and Optimizing Data Access by Using Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Design caching strategies.

• Select ADO.NET caching.
• Design custom caching functionality.
• Design a refresh strategy for cached data.

ADO.NET doesn't have a cache.  ASP.NET does.  ADO.NET retrieves results into objects like DataSets that can be cached in the ASP.NET cache or your own Cache app.

Designing your caching functionality seems like a lot of work.  You have to manage the size of the cache, object expiration, object invalidation.  I use the Enterprise library and that provides a lot of the plumbing.

Refreshing cached data is done using Query Notifications via the SqlDependency or SqlNotificationRequest objects.  There is a good article on MSDN outlining how to set this up.  Steve Smith mentions the changes that have occured since Beta 2 on his blog.

Next up->Client Libraries