JCache is rapidly nearing completion and we would like the community to start using it. The API is becoming quite stable.
The home for all things JCache is: https://github.com/jsr107/jsr107spec. Today I updated that page with the following details so that you can all get started.
We expect to release our first non-snapshot release in a few week’s time with further releases leading up to JavaOne.
I am doing two sessions on caching at JavaOne. If you are attending please come along to learn more. My sessions are:
Session ID: 24223
Session Title: The New JSR 107 Caching Standard
Session ID: 24241
Session Title: The Essence of Caching
For the uninitiated JCache is the API being defined in JSR107. It defines a standard Java Caching API for use by developers and a standard SPI (“Service Provider Interface”) for use by implementers.
Release
The stable releases of this software are tagged with version numbers, starting with 0.1. Eventually, when the specification is further along releases will match the specification number.
We expect out first stable release early August 2011.
Snapshot Releases
Snapshot releases of jars for binaries, source and javadoc are available.
Download the cache-api from https://oss.sonatype.org/index.html#nexus-search;quick~javax-cache
or use the following Maven snippet:
<repository>
<id>sonatype-nexus-snapshots</id>
<name>Sonatype Nexus Snapshots</name>
<url>https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots</url>
<releases>
<enabled>false</enabled>
</releases>
<snapshots>
<enabled>true</enabled>
</snapshots>
</repository>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.cache</groupId>
<artifactId>cache-api</artifactId>
<version>0.2-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>
Javadoc
The JavaDoc is available as a jar with the releases. We also have the latest JavaDoc online.
Specification
The evolving specification is available online on as a Google Doc.
Reference Implementation
The reference implementation (“RI”) source is available on GitHub.
This implementation is not meant for production use. For that we would refer you to one of the many open source and commercial implementations of JCache.
The RI is there to ensure that the specification and API works.
For example, some things that we leave out:
- implementation of transactions.
- eviction does not use an LRU or similar algorithm it just evicts an entry when full.
- concurrency. The RI is not exhaustively tested for thread safety.
- tiered storage. A simple on heap store is used.
- replicated or distributed caching
- cache sizing. All caches are hard coded to be of size 100 entries.
Why did we do this? Because a much greater engineering effort, which gets put into the open source and commercial caches which implement this API, is required to accomplish these things.
Having said that, the RI is Apache 2 and is a correct implementation of the spec. It can be used to create new cache implementations.
Building From Source
mvn clean install
Mailing list
Please join the mailing list if you’re interested in using or developing the software: http://groups.google.com/group/jsr107
IRC
We will be using the #jsr107 channel on Freenode for chat.
We also have set up a commit hook which publishes commits to the channel.
Issue tracker
Please log issues to: https://github.com/jsr107/jsr107spec/issues
Contributing
Right now code contribution is limited to the Expert Group, but please feel free to post to the mailing list.
License
The API is available under the JPA license and may be freely used.
The TCK is available under a restricted TCK license although the tests.
The reference implementation is available under an Apache 2 license.
For details please read the license in each source code file.
Contributors
This free, open source software was made possible by the JSR107 Expert Group who put many hours of hard work into it.
