Terracotta (an open source technology) provides a clustered, durable virtual heap. Terracotta's goal is to make Java apps scale with as little effort as possible. If you are using Hibernate, there are several patterns that can be used to leverage Terracotta and reduce the load on your database so your app can scale.
First, you can use the Terracotta clustered Hibernate cache. This is a high-performance clustered cache and allows you to avoid hitting the database on all nodes in your cluster. It's suitable, not just for read-only, but also for read-mostly and read-write use cases, which traditionally have not been viewed as good use cases for Hibernate second level cache.
Another high performance option is to disconnect your POJOs from their Hibernate session and manage them entirely in Terracotta shared heap instead. This is a great option for conversational data where the conversational data is not of long-term interest but must be persistent and highly-available. This pattern can significantly reduce your database load but does require more changes to your application than using second-level cache.
This talk will examine the basics of what Terracotta provides and examples of how you can scale your Hibernate application with both clustered second level cache and detached clustered state. Also, we'll take a look at Terracotta's Hibernate-specific monitoring tools.
Speaker: Alex Miller
Sponsor: ComSys
Meeting slides: Scaling Hibernate With Terracotta
