database cache

The database cache is a portion of memory that is reserved for holding content from the underlying database. Whenever an attempt is made to retrieve information from the database, the database will first check this cache before going to disk. The database cache can help significantly improve performance by avoiding costly disk I/O.

The database cache may be used either instead of or in addition to the server's entry cache. The database cache frequently creates a more compact representation of the data (which means that more data can be held in the cache in systems with limited memory), but the entry cache generally holds data in a format that can be more efficiently used by the server.