What approaches or tools have you used for data caching?

For caching data in C#, I often use several approaches:

• MemoryCache from the System.Runtime.Caching namespace — for local in-memory cache within the application. It allows setting cache lifetime, priorities, etc.

• IMemoryCache and IDistributedCache from ASP.NET Core — for caching in web applications. IMemoryCache is a local cache, while IDistributedCache is for distributed caching (e.g., Redis).

• External cache systems like Redis or Memcached for scalable and distributed caching.

Example of using MemoryCache:

using System.Runtime.Caching;

var cache = MemoryCache.Default;
string cacheKey = "user_123";
var user = cache.Get(cacheKey) as User;
if (user == null)
{
    user = GetUserFromDatabase(123); // method to get from DB
    cache.Set(cacheKey, user, DateTimeOffset.Now.AddMinutes(10));
}
// use user

This approach reduces database access and improves performance.