Terracotta Co-develops Critical Caching Standard for Java Community

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Terracotta, Inc., the leader in in-memory technologies for enterprise big data, today announced that javax.cache, a caching standard for Java applications, has formally entered Draft Review Stage under the Java Community Process. The standard, co-developed by Terracotta Chief Technology Officer Greg Luck, within JSR107, provides a standardized approach to how Java applications temporarily cache data—a critical factor for achieving big data performance and scalability and a core technology within leading in-memory solutions.

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Without a standard caching mechanism for Java applications, developers have been forced to create their own caching APIs, significantly increasing coding time and costs. Now, with javax.cache, developers no longer have to modify the coding from one proprietary API to another. Similarly, ISVs can leverage the standard to introduce pluggable caching that supports multiple implementations, rather than just a select few.

"The javax.cache standard addresses a long overdue issue in Java development," said Greg Luck, CTO of Terracotta. "This standard is aligned with Terracotta's focus on technologies that deliver scale, speed and simplicity for developers, applications and businesses. It's exciting to see our work coming to fruition."

With the javax.cache standard, Terracotta and other members of the Java expert group will be able to offer broader adoption of distributed caching via a large variety of commercial and open source solutions. Terracotta's BigMemory solution has helped define and set the standard for industry-wide caching technologies and in-memory big data management, unlocking the untapped value in big data and delivering up to 1,000 times faster access to terabytes of data than any other technology. With the increased affordability of servers with memory capacities of 1TB and higher, vendor solutions such as Terracotta's BigMemory place entire datasets in memory—in essence using the cache as the operational store for the application. Some of the other companies that have expressed interest in implementing the javax.cache specifications include Oracle (Coherence), IBM (ExtremeScale), JBoss (Infinispan) and Fujitsu (Interstage XTP).

Availability and new features
The javax.cache standard will be included in Java EE 7, developed within JSR342, which is due to be finalized in 2013. In the meantime, javax.cache will work in Java SE 6 and higher, as well as Java EE 6 environments. The basic concept of javax.cache is a CacheManager that holds and controls a collection of caches, with the following additional features:

• Read-through and write-through caching
• Cache event listeners
• Statistics
• Transactions including all isolation levels 
• Caching annotations
• Generic caches, which hold a defined key and value type
• Definition of storage by reference (applicable to on heap caches only) and storage by value

How to provide commentary
The Early Draft Review phase of javax.cache is open until November 22, followed by a 30-day public draft review period. Final approval will be sought in early 2013. Please visit the home of the project at JSR107 and send your comments to: [email protected]. You can also create and review issues here.

Supporting Resources
Terracotta
BigMemory
BigMemory Go
Enterprise Ehcache
Ehcache Community
Software AG
JSR107

About Terracotta, Inc.
Terracotta, Inc. is a leading provider of game-changing Big Data management solutions for the enterprise. Its flagship BigMemory product line features Big Data in-memory solutions that deliver performance at any scale. Terracotta's other award winning data management solutions include Ehcache, the de facto caching standard and Quartz the de facto scheduler for enterprise Java. Terracotta supports the data management needs of a majority of the Global 1000 with over 2,500,000 deployments of its products. Terracotta is a wholly owned subsidiary of Software AG (Frankfurt TecDAX: SOW). For more information, please visit www.terracotta.org.

SOURCE Terracotta, Inc.