Caching is a crucial component in ensuring data reliability and performance in modern applications, transforming them from sluggish to seamless with sub-millisecond response times. The effectiveness of a caching strategy depends on core decisions about where, when, and how to cache, which impact performance, consistency, and availability. Local caching offers speed by keeping data close but struggles with persistence and consistency in scalable applications, while remote caching provides a reliable, centralized solution crucial for maintaining consistent performance across architectures. The timing of caching, whether on read or write, affects space efficiency and latency, with read caching being flexible and widely applicable, and write caching excelling in predictable data access patterns. Integrating the cache either inline or aside in the data flow affects control and complexity, with aside caching offering flexibility and resilience at the cost of complexity, and inline caching providing simplicity but risking a single point of failure. Common pitfalls in caching, such as poor invalidation and stale data, can erode reliability, but tools like Momento Cache simplify the process by abstracting complexity and ensuring fast, consistent performance, allowing developers to build scalable, dependable applications.