***
### What is Caffeine cache?
- A **high-performance caching library for Java**.
- One fundamental difference between a [[Cache Vs Buffer | cache]] and a _Map_ is that a cache evicts stored items.
- An **eviction policy decides which objects should be deleted** at any given time. This policy **directly affects the cache's hit rate** — a crucial characteristic of caching libraries.
- Caffeine uses the _Window TinyLfu_ eviction policy, which provides a **near-optimal hit rate**.
***
**References**:
- [Introduction to Caffeine](https://www.baeldung.com/java-caching-caffeine)