JBoss Cache 2.1.0 Alegrias is in BETA1

JBoss Cache 2.1.0.BETA1 has just been released. This is an incremental release on the 2.x series.

The download is available on the JBoss Cache downloads page, and the docs on the JBoss Cache docs page.

Your feedback on this release is much appreciated!

Enjoy,

Manik Surtani

Manik Surtani @ GrailsExchange

Guys n' Gals,

I'll be speaking on Advanced JBoss Cache usage at Grails Exchange in London later this month. Grails Exchange runs from Wednesday the 17th of October to Friday the 19th of October, inclusive, and my talk is scheduled for Thursday the 18th of October, at 15:10.

I hope to cover an architectural and design overview of JBoss Cache, speak about how it is typically used in other applications and products, explain a bit about the new 2.x series APIs, and describe what we have in store for the future.

Hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Manik

Hudson at last!

So we've finally got a public Hudson instance running for JBoss Cache to replace CruiseControl, which went out with our migration from CVS to SVN. And what a long wait too - whew!

So at last, you can now view build status and test results on the JBoss.ORG public Hudson instance (now to get it to expose additional source analyses like FindBugs results, etc!)

Enjoy, people!
Manik

JBoss Cache 1.4.1.SP5 released

A service pack on JBoss Cache 1.4.1, SP5, has just been released, fixing 2 pretty important bugs. I'd recommend anyone on the 1.x series upgrade to 1.4.1.SP5.

The download is available on the JBoss Cache downloads page, and the docs on the JBoss Cache docs page. Talk about this release on the JBoss Cache user forums.

Enjoy,

Manik Surtani

Month of Bugs - results

The recently-run Month of Bugs has proved to be a very useful tool in helping get a lot of testing and hardening on the Habanero CRs leading up to releasing.

As promised, prize winners have now been contacted, and I'd like to thank you all for your valuable contributions and participation. I do see this mechanism as a useful and effective thing to do prior to major releases, and quite possibly something we'd repeat in the future. :-)

Cheers,
Manik

Full time dev on JBoss Cache

Red Hat has just hired contributor and committer Mircea Markus to work on JBoss Cache full-time. Much needed as well, given the roadmap for 2.1.0, 3.0.0, etc. :-)

Welcome aboard Mircea, viva "professional open source"!

Cheers,
Manik

Hidden gems in JBoss Cache 2.0.0.GA

JBoss Cache 2.0.0.GA is out and as you can see from Manik's last entry, we're already moving forward...and fast. Before JBoss Cache 2.0 is forgotten, let's have a quick glance at some hidden gems that came within it:

1.- Singleton Cache Store Functionality

Cache stores are backend stores for data handled within JBoss Cache. Until now, the main two strategies to configure these cache stores were:

• sharing a cache store between all JBoss Cache instances.
• each instance having its own cache store.
  

Each strategy has its own caveats. For example, what if an user wanted to use a file based shared cache store, but the file system (i.e. shared NFS) did not support concurrent access/updates to it? An alternative solution would have been to configure JBoss Cache so that for each instance to had its own cache store. However, the user would have gone from having to manage/maintain one cache store to having to maintain N cache stores. Singleton Cache Store functionality was designed and developed to respond to the demands of such end users.

When cache loaders, which interact with cache stores, are configured for singleton store, only the JBoss Cache instance in the coordinator of cluster interacts with the cache store. The rest of nodes replicate changes to the coordinator which is in charge of putting them in the store. When such coordinator leaves the cluster, or stops working, a new coordinator is elected which takes charge of communicating with the cache store. This allows for only one JBoss Cache instance to interact with the cache store at a time.

More information on Singleton Cache Store functionality and configuration options can be found in the JBoss Cache 2.0 documentation.

2.- Transforming Cache Loaders

In JBoss Cache 2.0, the format of the data stored in the File and JDBC cache loaders has been changed so that it uses the JBoss Cache marshaling framework, created to improve replication efficiency, to format data to be stored in these cache stores.

At JBoss, division of Red Hat, we think about our product's end users and when implementing such data format change, we realised that some of JBoss Cache's users might have populated cache stores in JBoss Cache 1.x format. Even though JBoss Cache 2.0 is a major release, we wanted to provide our a way to transform existing cache stores from 1.x format to 2.x format. Because of this, we created a set of one-off Transforming Cache Loaders whose job is:

• read data from cache stores the way we did in JBoss Cache 1.x
• write data to cache stores in JBoss Cache 2.x format.

Together with this, an example was created which recursively reads the contents of the cache store via these Transforming Cache Loaders, and stores the data read back into the cache store. Just run this example with the parameters of your cache loader and the entire cache store will be transformed.

The Transforming Cache Loaders, necessary libraries to understand JBoss Cache 1.x and example mentioned can be found within the JBoss Cache 2.0.0.GA distribution ZIP file that can be downloaded from here.

More information on Transforming Cache Loaders can be found in the JBoss Cache 2.0 documentation.