1. A computer accessible storage hardware having thereon stored a system for providing application-layer functionality between one or more database clients and one or more database servers, the system comprising: one or more decoders residing at a decoding layer above a network layer, the decoders residing at a first network location between one or more database clients residing at one or more second network locations and one or more database servers residing at one or more third network locations, the decoders being operable to: receive database messages communicated from the database clients and intended for the database servers and database messages communicated from the database servers and intended for the database clients; decode the database messages; extract query-language statements from the database messages; a caching application residing at an application layer above the decoding layer, the caching application residing at the first network location, the caching application being operable to: receive query-language statements extracted at the decoders comprising queries; receive query-language statements extracted at the decoders comprising query results corresponding to the queries; record the queries and the query results corresponding to the queries in a cache residing at the first network location wherein the queries are associated with a corresponding query result; a monitoring application operable to receive query-language statements extracted at the decoders and record observations on the database messages based at least in part on the query-language statements extracted at the decoders, wherein at least one observation is associated with a query result stored in the cache and communicate one or more observations associated with the queries to one or more computing systems at a fourth network location according to the needs of the one or more computer systems, wherein at least one of the computer systems maintains a web cache and is operable to modify the web cache based upon the communicated observations wherein observations on the database messages based at least in part on the query-language statement extracted at the decoders comprise the following: subject database instances of the query-language statements; network protocols and versions of the network protocols used to communicate the database messages; devices hosting the subject database instances of the query-language statements; hostnames, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, Media Access Control (MAC) addresses, and network ports of the database servers; operating systems (OSs), versions of the OSs, and attributes of the OSs of devices hosting the subject database instances; devices hosting the clients; and a number of queries communicated from each of the clients to each of one or more database instances; and an application residing at an application layer above the decoding layer, the application residing at the first network location, the application being operable to receive and process query-language statements extracted at the decoders.
2. The computer accessible storage hardware of claim 1 , wherein the caching application is further operable to communicate query results corresponding to the queries from the cache to the clients.