Infinispan & Hibernate Relationship: How do they work with each other?

[denramos]

I'm trying to get a better understanding of how Infinispan and Hibernate work with each other and how they make use of each others services. I'm new to both but I have some understanding of how they work individually but a little confused with how they work together.

Hibernate can use Infinispan as a 2L cache; but how exactly does it do so? Does Hibernate use Infinispan API to cache.put("queries")?

Can Infinispan use hibernate as a cache loader?

Will enabling infinispan as a 2L cache in hibernate be sufficient to store some objects in cache memory? Or will I be required to persist an object through hibernate and mysql AND use the cache.put(key, object). Like so:

Session session = sessionFactory.openSession();
for (Integer i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
     session = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
     session.beginTransaction();
     car[i] = new Car(null, this.randomName(), this.randomBrand(), this.randomCost());
     // persist in Hibernate
     session.saveOrUpdate(car[i]);
     session.getTransaction().commit();
     session.flush();
     int tempI = i;
     i = defaultCache.size();
     // add to cache in memory
     defaultCache.put(i.toString(), car[tempI]);
     i = tempI;
}

If 2L is sufficient how can I access this object? What does hibernate use as the key?

Thanks in advance!

[brenuart]

I think you should first read Hibernate's documentation regarding its caching feature (http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/core/3.6/reference/en-US/html_single/#performance-cache).

In short, caching in Hibernate is totally transparent - which means your application code doesn't change whether you activate or not the second level cache. Hibernate comes with support for many different cache solutions, incuding Infinispan.

In your example, Hibernate doesn't make use of the cache, it is your code that uses it...

[denramos]

I see so simply enabling 2L cache will enable caching?

After doing a bit of reading Hibernate doesn't cache entities, unless configured. With 2L cache enabled in hibernate (using infinispan) and enabling entitycaching, will it be sufficient to cache and replicate this in a cluster?

[brenuart]

If Hibernate is properly configured, yes.

If Infinispan is properly configured, yes.

But as usual, nothing is better than trying yourselves... do your home work, and see what happens.