Distributed caching is a technique for storing frequently accessed data across multiple servers to improve performance and scalability. It's like having a bunch of minions running around fetching your data so you don't have to wait for the slow database server to respond.

How to use it in a sentence

• I was trying to optimize our new microservice, but the lead architect kept going on about distributed caching and eventual consistency - I just wanted to ship the damn thing!

• The startup's fancy new distributed caching layer was the talk of the town, until they realized they forgot to handle cache invalidation and now their data is as stale as the leftover pizza in the breakroom.

If you actually want to learn more...

• Scaling Memcache at Facebook: Learn how Facebook leveraged distributed caching with Memcached to handle their massive scale. Link

• Amazon ElastiCache: If you're too lazy to manage your own distributed caching infrastructure, just throw some money at AWS and let them handle it for you. Link

• Redis vs Memcached: A comparison of two popular distributed caching solutions, because apparently one caching system isn't enough for some people. Link

Note: the Developer Dictionary is in Beta. Please direct feedback to skye@statsig.com.