Abstract
We discuss the challenges of devising a useful shared data cache service as a part of the cloud platform. Outside the cloud, such a service appeals to developers for two main reasons. Most importantly, data caches reduce the response latency experienced by users. For example, rendering a content page with various personalized boxes as part of a user web session often involves numerous database lookups. Therefore, if the content generation involves cheap memory accesses to a data cache instead of actual database queries, the user experiences will improve. Moreover, data caches are simple to use: they normally expose a simple get/set interface akin to key/value stores and a rudimentary mechanism to expire values [2], thus allowing result-based caching to be seamlessly integrated with existing database-driven code.