"Ehcache is the de facto open source cache for Java. It is used to boost performance, offload databases and simplify scalability. Backed by the Terracotta Server Array, Ehcache becomes a linearly scalable distributed cache. It is a schema-less, key-value, Java-based distributed cache. It provides flexible consistency control, data durability, and with the release of Ehcache 2.4, search by key, value and attribute indexes. "
As seems fitting the blog post is up on myNoSQL.
Ehcache is the de facto open source cache for Java.
Greg,
I enjoyed the article and Ehcache sounds extremely powerful. It appears to have many of the features present in Coherence (which is a little pricey). My question is regarding the statement that ehcache is the de facto standard amongst open source solutions. Could you expand on this with some indication of where you are collecting data to support this statement vs. JBoss Cache, Infinispan, memcached? It is difficult to know what solution is being used more frequently by industry when there are so many touting their solution, but so little information concerning adoption.
Thanks for the article,
Bill Kemp
Bill
There are around 20 open source Java caches. We throw around the term "defacto standard" as a shorthand way of saying:
- Ehcache is embedded in more projects than any other
- Ehcache is used more frequently than any other
- In the absence of JCache many people have written to the Ehcache API. So we are a defacto caching API in much the same way that Spring is a defacto standard, but is not an implementation of a standard.
When it comes to the commercial caches, they have very small market shares but are rich on features and solve important enterprise problems. Ehcache has been growing up so it's commercial version can be used as an alternative to the likes of Coherence. From a features comparison for a Java developer, we have almost all of Coherence's features plus a few unique ones of our own like BigMemory and the rich caching APIs in extra modules.
Greg
There are around 20 open source Java caches. We throw around the term "defacto standard" as a shorthand way of saying ..
Everybody likes to think of themselves as "the standard". What press release doesn't start by claiming that company X is "the" leader in their particular space? ;-)
When it comes to the commercial caches, they have very small market shares but are rich on features and solve important enterprise problems.
I guess it depends on how you define "market share": by number of downloads (silly), number of servers it's running on (reasonable), number of actual clustered deployments, number of paying customers (not a bad measure), actual revenue (reasonable). I personally think that any other solution out there would gladly trade places with Coherence for most of those measurements ;-)
Ehcache has been growing up so it's commercial version can be used as an alternative to the likes of Coherence.
I don't mind that other products compare where they are to Coherence. I love the competition -- and it's often very good (i.e. very tough, very smart, very talented) competition. This is a great industry to be in if you like being challenged every single day to push ahead and innovate and serve your customers well! ... because if you don't, there's always someone working hard to out-innovate and out-deliver you.
From a features comparison for a Java developer, we have almost all of Coherence's features plus a few unique ones of our own like BigMemory and the rich caching APIs in extra modules.
Don't sit on your laurels .. we certainly aren't! Coherence continues to get faster, more scalable, more reliable, more feature rich, better documented, more complete and easier to use with each release.
Peace,
Cameron Purdy | Oracle Coherence
Greg,
Another comment I forgot to make in my post is that I hope you don't compare EHCache pre-Terracotta with products like GigaSpaces, Coherence, GridGain, Infinispan. This is just disingenuous - EHCache had no transactions to speak of, no querying, no partioned caching, etc. etc.
Yes, sourceforge is full of distributed hashmap implementations but they have relatively nothing do with data grid products. Your hard ongoing work on growing enterprise EHCache on Terracotta platform is a cleartestament to that...
Best,
Nikita.
Bill,
I'll give you my perception of the market (from my individual point of view). I travel, meet and talk a lot with potential enterprise caching/data grid customers for the last 3-4 years.
I have never seen a single project even mentioning EHCache, IBM's ObjectGrid or GemStone, for example. I do, however, routinely see/hear GigaSpaces and Coherence. Sometimes Terracotta (before EHCache), Infinispan and even Hazelcast. And I, of course, hear me talking about GridGain's Data Grid every time :) Take it for what it's worth.
What does it say? Not much - except that this is all largely a perception.
Nikita Ivanov.
GridGain Systems.
Indeed. In my perception it is true, largely due to the fact that Hibernate & EHCache are a popular combination.
Perception aside. Google Trends can give us some clue on popularity. but then again this doesn't say anything on quality. I guess most products have their own sweetspot in the caching arena.
Perception aside. Google Trends can give us some clue on popularity. but then again this doesn't say anything on quality. I guess most products have their own sweetspot in the caching arena.
You might as well add on memcache, oscache, swarmcache, etc on there too if you really want to be fair. hmmmmm
So memcacheD is double the level of EHCache? yet this is allegedly the "de facto standard" ? doesn't seem so. I really like ehcache, has a great feature set, and use it on many projects, but please back off on the artificial claims
me too.,,i am learning a lot.thanks theserverside.com
are they available commercially?
