Hi,

we have a need for distributed cache invalidation in our app that uses Hibernate 3.0.5 and OSCache 2.1 as 2nd level cache implementation. We tried to use the JGroups support of OSCache (with JGroups 2.2.8), but encountered some serious issues with threads that wouldn't shut down anymore when we tried to stop the application server (WebSphere 5.1.1 on Windows 2003).

While looking for a solution, I've found several blogs and mailing list postings that stated that the Hibernate team advices not to use OSCache in a distributed environment as 2nd level cache, and that Hibernate doesn't really support it. OTOH, I've also found some patches that address the issues with Hibernate and OSCache, which do not seem to have been incorporated in the Hibernate distro. However, all this information seems to be about Hibernate 2.1.

Can anyone tell me what the current status of clustered OSCache support as 2nd level cache is? For instance, on the OSCache site there's an alternative implementation for Hibernate's OSCache support, but it also seems to be Hibernate 2.1-specific. Did anything changed with Hibernate 3.0 in this area?
I would also be very interested to hear from people that have used this configuration, successful or not. If you have had success, did you use JGroups or JMS-based invalidation?

TIA.

Joris