System, method, apparatus and article of manufacture for identity based caching

A process for obtaining a copy of a data object is disclosed. A location-independent identifier associated with the desired data object is obtained, for example, from a primary file that requires a copy of the data object. A cache is interrogated to determine whether a copy of the data object is cached. If the data object is cached, a copy of the cached data object is obtained from the cache. If the data object is not cached, a network call is performed obtain a new copy of the data object.