memcache - best practice

[timeless]

Marcus Bointon wrote:

>> If I have an object that I regenerate every 15 seconds, is that object
>> worth caching or do the process of caching take more power that I will
>> benefit from the cache object?
>
> That should be a simple calculation.

Indeed. To illustrate one extreme, we have objects at Digg that expire 
at 10 seconds, which is a huge win, since it takes sometimes 2 seconds 
to generate that information, and it's asked for hundreds of times per 
second. Simple math proves out the necessity of caching that object for 
even 10 seconds.

When we were first rolling out Memcached, there were some objects that 
expired after 5 seconds, and it was still a big win.

--
timeless