Stacks of Cache

Caching layers have become as pervasive as persistence layers. As the caching space matures, and application needs change, developers have the choice of either moving to new technologies or adapting their existing technologies to fit new needs.

This talk focuses on adapting and augmenting interfaces to memcache in order to overcome some of its limitations and to better utilize available resources. Then we'll talk about combining those interfaces in a simple, snap-together fashion.

To get there we'll be touching on limiting API breadth, the perils of dog-piles and thundering herds, and why composition trumps inheritance. The examples will be written in Ruby, but should apply just as well to other languages.