The beta version of ehcache-1.4 is available on sourceforge and the Maven central repository.
This version significantly enrichens the ehcache API and enhances extension of ehcache. The new features are:
You can now define CacheLoaders in the ehcache core API. They supplement the existing SelfPopulatingCache. They can be configured in ehcache.xml or programmatically. They can be used for cache warming, and simple pull-through caching. See the Cache Loaders chapter in the documentation for more details.
You can now define a CacheExceptionHandler and register it progammatically or in ehcache.xml. The enable an exception handler to be registered with a cache so that it is called on exception rather than the exception being thrown. See the Cache Exception Handler chapter in the documentation for more details.
You can now define CacheExtensions and register them progammatically or in ehcache.xml. A CacheExtension is a generic facility which holds a reference to a cache and is bound to the cache lifecycle, making possible a wide variety of extensions to behaviour. Usage examples are a cache refresh timer or a file monitoring mechanism. See the Cache Extensions chapter in the documentation for more details.
There are 5 minor bug fixes in the release. At the time of release there are no open bugs in ehcache.
See http://ehcache.sourceforge.net/ for more information.