Hi,

I am hoping to get some advise from developers that have used either
one of this methods. I need a database dependency and it would be
valuable to me to know which approach is the better trade in terms of
ease of use and performance. I am planning to use webcontrols with
partialcachingattributes (I want to implement the caching as standard
as possible).

I read that one approach to establish a database dependency is touching
a file from a stored proc and establish a dependency between the
partialcaching and that file.

The other option (and this is what ASP.Net 2.0 offers to users of SQL
Server version before Yukon but ASP.Net 2.0 is not an option in my
project) is to poll (every 5 seconds for example) a table that records
relevant updates and invalidates the webcontrol's cache if appropriate.

I am unsure, which approach is the better alternative. In a web farm
there will be additional time on the wire no matter what, since a UNC
file dependency does require network traffic just like the SQLDB
connection will. Quering an update status table will only produce
minimal SQL Server overhead plus this approach does not require
additional file access permissions like the UNC path dependency will.
So to me the polling approach looks more promising (and that this is
also the way ASP.Net 2.0 establishes the dependency is another good
sign).

However, does somebody here have different experience or maybe a better
approach? Maybe using a different cache container (e.g. Enterprise
Library 1.0) does offer better ways for output caching?

Thank you for any hint in advance!

Regards
DC