9 Understanding Caching

The EclipseLink cache is an in-memory repository that stores recently read or written objects based on class and primary key values. The cache improves performance by holding recently read or written objects and accessing them in-memory to minimize database access, manage locking and isolation level, and manage object identity.

EclipseLink defines the following entity caching annotations:

• @Cache

• @TimeOfDay

• @ExistenceChecking

EclipseLink also provides a number of persistence unit properties that you can specify to configure the EclipseLink cache. These properties may compliment or provide an alternative to annotations. For more information on these annotations and properties, see Java Persistence API (JPA) Extensions Reference for EclipseLink.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• About Cache Architecture

• About Cache Type and Size

• About Queries and the Cache

• About Handling Stale Data

• About Explicit Query Refreshes

• About Cache Expiration and Invalidation

• About Cache Indexes

• About Query Results Cache

• About Cache Locking and Transaction Isolation

• About Cache Optimization

• About Cache Coordination