What’s on the Caching poster
A 5-row table: Strategy · How · Risk.
Strategies, roughly from simplest to most involved.
- TTL expiry — Expire after n seconds — Stale within the window
- Write-through — Update cache on every write — Slower writes
- Write-behind — Write cache now, store later — Data loss on crash
- Cache-aside — App checks cache, then store — Thundering herd on a miss
- Explicit invalidation — Delete the key on change — Easy to miss a path
Cache stampede: many requests miss at once and all hit the database. Fix with a lock, or by staggering the TTLs.
Questions about the Caching poster
- What’s on the Caching poster?
- A 5-row table: Strategy · How · Risk. Strategies, roughly from simplest to most involved. TTL expiry — Expire after n seconds — Stale within the window; Write-through — Update cache on every write — Slower writes; Write-behind — Write cache now, store later — Data loss on crash; Cache-aside — App checks cache, then store — Thundering herd on a miss; Explicit invalidation — Delete the key on change — Easy to miss a path. Cache stampede: many requests miss at once and all hit the database. Fix with a lock, or by staggering the TTLs.
- Who is the Caching poster for?
- Caching belongs to the Computing section rather than to a school year, because computing is not something one grade owns. Anyone learning systems can pin it up — a beginner, a student mid-course, or someone revising years later.
- When should you use the Caching poster?
- Naming things and cache invalidation. Decide the invalidation strategy before adding the cache. A wall chart earns its place by being glanceable from where the work is happening, so Caching belongs on the wall where that computing work actually happens, within glancing distance, rather than filed away.
- What other posters go with Caching?
- Concurrency & Parallelism, DNS and Garbage Collection sit alongside Caching in the Computing section. Printed together they make a wall rather than a single sheet, which is how a reference set actually gets used.Concurrency & ParallelismDNSGarbage Collection
- Is the Caching poster free to download and print?
- Yes. Caching downloads as a free PDF with no account, no email and no watermark, like everything else in the Computing section. Print as many copies as you like for a home, a classroom, a library or a tutoring group; reselling the file is the only thing the licence rules out.Read the licence
- What size does the Caching poster print at?
- Caching is a vector PDF laid out for US Letter, and prints on A4 with Fit to page — the same file, no separate download. Because every mark on it is drawn rather than photographed, it stays sharp enlarged to A3, A2 or A1 at a copy shop. Colour carries emphasis only, so a greyscale print of Caching loses nothing.Printing guide
Related posters
Charts that sit alongside Caching on the same wall.
Browse every Computing poster, or start from the full catalogue.