@AuraEnabled and cacheable=true

public with sharing class AccountController {
    @AuraEnabled(cacheable=true)
    public static List<Account> getAccounts() {
        return [SELECT Id, Name, Industry FROM Account WITH SECURITY_ENFORCED LIMIT 50];
    }
}

@AuraEnabled is the annotation that exposes an Apex method to Lightning components. Legacy note: the name comes from the older Aura component framework (Module 1 covered Aura vs. LWC) — but the same annotation is what LWC uses today too. There is no separate "LWC-only" version of this annotation.

cacheable=true marks a method as read-only, enabling the same kind of client-side caching Lightning Data Service provides automatically for record reads (Module 6). It is required for any Apex method used with @wire, and must never be set on a method that performs DML (insert/update/delete) — a cacheable method is assumed safe to call repeatedly and reuse cached results, which is only true if it never changes data.

Unlike LDS, which enforces field-level security and sharing automatically, a hand-written SOQL query does not do this by default. WITH SECURITY_ENFORCED on the query (as shown above) makes Apex throw if the running user lacks access to any queried field — an explicit, necessary safeguard that has no equivalent needed in LDS-based components.

Getting cacheable=true wrong in either direction is a real, common bug: forgetting it on a read-only method used with @wire causes a deployment or runtime error; setting it on a method that performs DML causes a silent correctness bug where stale cached data masks a real write.