Rails caching strategies for performance

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Rails caching dramatically improves performance by avoiding expensive computations and queries. Fragment caching caches view partials. Russian doll caching nests cache fragments for efficient invalidation. Low-level caching stores arbitrary data. Rails.cache.fetch simplifies cache-or-compute pattern. Cache keys use model touch for automatic invalidation. I use memcached or Redis for distributed caching. Counter caches avoid COUNT queries. Query result caching prevents duplicate queries in request. HTTP caching with ETags and Last-Modified headers reduces server load. Cache sweepers invalidate stale data. Proper caching strategy balances freshness against performance. Understanding cache invalidation is crucial—Phil Karlton said naming and cache invalidation are the two hard problems in computer science.