What is the main task and application of the Memcached system?

Memcached is a distributed in-memory caching system whose main purpose is to accelerate web applications by storing frequently requested data (such as query results from a database) in RAM. This reduces the load on the database and decreases response time.

Typical uses of Memcached include:

• Caching database query results.
• Storing user sessions.
• Caching pages or parts of pages.

Example of using Memcached in Python with the pymemcache library:

from pymemcache.client import base

client = base.Client(('localhost', 11211))

# Save a value
client.set('user_123', 'John Doe')

# Retrieve a value
user = client.get('user_123')
print(user)  # b'John Doe'