Is it possible to store records from Db in cache and use them from cache with Redis & Mule 4 Object store?

This is a follow up question to an earlier one asked

So using Mule cache , can I refresh the underlying object store ( used by Mule cache ) so that periodically I can retrieve the data from database and pump it into object store .

What I am trying to achieve is whenever a request comes in – the data is attempted to be retrieved from cache . If not found ( miss ) I do NOT want to go immedicately retrieve data from the database ( rather retrieving data from database and pushing int into object store and cache should happen as a scheduled task )

Based on the earlier question my understanding is :

#1 This cannot be done with the inbuilt cache mechanism provided by Mule since this cache manages underlying data itself

#2 I think my use case can be achieved by using an Object store BUT without a cache – so while I can store data periodically and use it while querying I cannot use mule cache

#3 Probably a better solution / rather than an Object store could be something like redis cache but thats a lot of work !

Kindly confirm if this is correct
Thanks

This is a followup to earlier question

Update#1
So in this case I think a picture will be better to explain what I am trying to do and to also elaborate on what @aled mentioned in the first part of his answer ( thanks @aled )

Here is the customer request flow ( customer wants to retrieve employee data based on employee id )
customer flow

And here is the scheduler flow which is pumping data into cache:
enter image description here

So now the scheduler is able to load data into cache successfully
( used keyGenerationExpression='#[(payload.id default "")]'

So lets say the scheduler loads into cache :

    {
    "id" : "001",
    "name" : "John"
    }

Now if customer requests for id 001 it correctly retrieves from cache
However if customer requests for any other id ( say 002 ) then inadverently its a cache miss causing this id to be populated in the cache – this is NOT what I want , my requirement is to simply not populate the cache and return with empty results which tells me this empId is not present.

I am not sure if this is possible using Mule cache ?

Here is the code :
Customer flow :

<flow name="customer_requesting_info_flow">
    <http:listener doc:name="Listener" path="/caching/*" config-ref="HTTP_Listener_config"/>
    
    <set-payload value='#[%dw 2.0
output application/java
---
{
    "id" : payload.empId
}]' doc:name="get emp id from request and then try to extract details from cache"  />
    <ee:cache doc:name="Cache" cachingStrategy-ref="Caching_Strategy">
        <logger level="INFO" doc:name="Logger" message="Cache Miss - Not found in cache"/>
</ee:cache>
        
        <ee:transform doc:name="Transform Message" doc:id="72bf1493-7f55-42de-9d30-84a9b03d257f" >
            <ee:message >
                <ee:set-payload ><![CDATA[%dw 2.0
output application/json
---
payload]]></ee:set-payload>
            </ee:message>
        </ee:transform>
        <logger level="INFO" doc:name="Logger" doc:id="9fdbd52e-4f31-414d-8443-2fc5fcde0298" message="done"/>
    </flow>

And here is the code for scheduler flow to push data into cache :

<flow name="load_cache">
        <scheduler doc:name="Scheduler">
            <scheduling-strategy >
                <fixed-frequency frequency="300000"/>
            </scheduling-strategy>
        </scheduler>
        <logger level="INFO" doc:name="Logger" message="started cron schedule"/>
<ee:transform doc:name="Transform Message">
            <ee:message >
                <ee:set-payload ><![CDATA[%dw 2.0
output application/java
---
    {
        "id" : "001",
        "name" : "John"
    }]]></ee:set-payload>
            </ee:message>
        </ee:transform>
        <flow-ref doc:name="load_cache_sub_flow" name="load_cache_sub_flow"/>
    </flow>
    <sub-flow name="load_cache_sub_flow">
        <ee:invalidate-cache doc:name="Invalidate Cache"  cachingStrategy-ref="Caching_Strategy"/>
        <ee:cache doc:name="Cache" cachingStrategy-ref="Caching_Strategy">
            <logger level="INFO" doc:name="Logger" message='#["Loading data into cache" ++ (payload.id)]'/>
        </ee:cache>
    </sub-flow>