Hi Folks -
I've been searching for validation on whether we could reliably use oscache clustering. We're currently using hibernate 2.1.2, but will be upgrading to 2.1.4 shortly.

We would like clustered invalidation, and NOT replication, since it is likely, (but not guaranteed) that data accessed on one app server will not be accessed on another app server. (Using replication would cause all app servers to load much useless data, in most but not all cases for us)

Also note that we are using JTA transactions via WeblogicTransactionManagerLookup, and our caches (currently ehcache) are set to "nonstrict-read-write" usage.

I've seen various posts (search for "oscache cluster" in the forums) suggesting that oscache should NOT be used for a clusted cache.

I've checked out SwarmCache, and its implementation does not have full support for "regions" - that is, a separate cache with separate configurations for each cachable class. For example, if I specify swarmcache.lru.size=1001 in my swarmcache.properties, that value is used for ALL regions.

OSCache seems to have better support for regions with this type of configuration.

From looking at the OSCache and OSCacheProvider code, I am guessing it is safe enough to use clusters with nonstrict-read-write, but NOT read-write - is this the basis for recommending against use of OSCache for clusters? If not, can anyone give some more details here?


At some point, we may cluster http sessions in our app servers, but until we do this, I would prefer a "clustered invalidation" approach in a clustered cache, which is why I haven't checked into JBoss TreeCache...

Of course, my other option would be to update swarm cache to enhance its configuration options to support region-specific configs...

Thanks for any info!
Tyson

I assume the JBoss TreeCache is out of the question? Or commercial options like Tangosol or GigaSpace (see the wiki for more info).

Out of curiosity, how did EHCache perform for you in a single-VM environment? We're deciding which cache implementation to use in our app, which doesn't need to be clustered (yet), and EHCache seems to be the easiest (and sufficiently capable) place to start.

We are currently using EHcache, and it works great.

My only complaint is VERY minor: if you do not specifically configure a cache for a specific region (i.e. class name [+collection name]), you will get a warning during startup. I don't really think this should be a "warning" level statement, but an "info" or maybe even "debug".

Anyhow, its not a problem at all, as far as usage goes.

tyson

Thanks for the reply. Gives me a little more confidence going in to the evaluation.