Driver Compatibility Matrix

Atomic Cache dynamically evaluates your cache store: stores supporting native tagging (redis, memcached, array) use native driver mechanisms, while non-taggable stores (file, database, sqlite, dynamodb) automatically receive virtual tagging without throwing runtime exceptions.

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Compatibility Overview

Driver	Tag Support	Stampede Locks	CI Matrix Status	Notes
redis	Native	Yes	Tested in CI	Recommended for high-concurrency production workloads. In production with high writes, schedule Laravel's php artisan cache:prune-stale-tags.
file	Virtual	Yes	Tested in CI	Default local development store. Virtual tags provide zero-crash tagging. FileStore supports locks natively.
database	Virtual	Yes	Compatible	Works on MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and SQL Server without extra setup.
array	Native	Yes	Tested in CI	In-memory per process (ArrayStore is taggable). Ideal for PHPUnit and automated test suites.
memcached	Native	Yes	Compatible	1 MB item limit: the transparent 800 KB chunk guard and Gzip compression protect against key overflow.
dynamodb	Virtual	Yes	Compatible	Items limited to 400 KB; configure ATOMIC_CACHE_CHUNK_MAX_BYTES below 400,000.

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Virtual Tagging vs Native Tagging

Native Tagging Stores (redis, memcached, array)

When running on Redis or Memcached, Atomic Cache forwards tagging operations directly to Laravel's TaggedCache implementation. This preserves high-speed atomic set invalidation native to the store.

Non-Taggable Stores (file, database, sqlite, dynamodb)

Calling Laravel's native Cache::tags(['products']) on non-taggable drivers throws:

BadMethodCallException: This cache store does not support tagging.

Atomic Cache intercepts these calls and applies Virtual Tag Versioning:

1. Maintains a persistent UUID version token for each active tag.
2. Embeds the hashed tag version into the physical cache key ({prefix}:{key}:vt:{hash}).
3. When AtomicCache::clearTags(['products']) is called, the tag version token is updated in 0ms.
4. All existing cache entries under that tag immediately experience a cache miss, with zero slow directory scans or heavy SQL deletes.

Safe for Monoliths and Micro-Services

Virtual tagging enables you to develop locally using the lightweight file or sqlite cache driver with full tagging support, then deploy to production on Redis without altering a single line of application code.