Hibernate 2.1.7:

class ResourceSchedule {

Long objOid; (primary key)
Long resourceOid; (foreign key)
Date startTime;
Date endTime;
String ScheduleType;
}

I would like to use ehCache to handle read/write caching on some very small (but often occuring) transactions. More specifically, I have a collection of resource schedules that relate to a table that currently is going into a hash map, with the key value being resourceOid. Since memory is cheap, querying for the 3000 or so active schedule types and putting them into a hash right away costs so much less then doing a series of smaller database transactions in cpu time.

The problem is I don't know how to tell ehCache to do such a thing. should I explicity create a cache during runtime and insert the resource schedules myself? Can I cache a collection of resource schedules indexed on the foreign key instead of by primary key (or the value ehcache uses)?

I apologize, I should clarify:

I have a collection mapped from resource to resource schedule, and its retreiving that collection by the object id of the resource that I'd like to cache.

If possible, I would like to throw data into the cache before any actual transactions take place.

Would doing that open up a big can of worms?