I've recently started working with cached map services. I thought that after I created the map cache that the connection to the database would disappear, but it hasn't.
Is this correct?
If you create the full cache that you want, and do not need to query or identify any of the data, for example a base map, you can edit your mxd and remove the link to the SQL database. I believe you can actually even delete or rename the mxd once the services is created, but personally, I take a backup and then leave a dummy mxd...just in case.
Point is, once a cache is created, the SQL data would not need to be accessed just for display purposes.