Recently I was asked to integrate WXS (Websphere Extreme Scale, commercial cache implementation from IBM) into existing WPS (Websphere Process Server)-based project to implement read-only non-distributed cache (one independent cache instance per JVM). The idea is to plug cache implementation using 2nd level cache interfaces defined by Hibernate.
I plugged in the objectgrid.jar into hibernate configuration:
<property name="cache.provider_class"> com.ibm.websphere.objectgrid.hibernate.cache.ObjectGridHibernateCacheProvider </property>
then saw the following exception during Hibernate initialisation:
[4/29/10 10:08:34:462 CEST] 00000069 RegisteredSyn E WTRN0074E: Exception caught from after_completion synchronization operation: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org/hibernate/cache/CacheException.<init>(Ljava/lang/Throwable; )V at com.ibm.ws.objectgrid.hibernate.cache.ObjectGridHibernateCache.getSession( ObjectGridHibernateCache.java:149) at com.ibm.ws.objectgrid.hibernate.cache.ObjectGridHibernateCache.put( ObjectGridHibernateCache.java:385) at org.hibernate.cache.UpdateTimestampsCache.invalidate( UpdateTimestampsCache.java:67)
WXS expects CacheException(java.lang.Throwable) constructor, Hibernate API supports this constructor since version 3.2. Version 3.1 currently used in project doesn't support this constructor (only CacheException(java.lang.Exception) is present). This issue forced Hibernate upgrade in the project. Note that no Hibernate version requirements found on official "requirements" page (huh?).
Conclusions:
- BIG BLUE is not a guarantee for high quality documentation
- Closed source is harder to implement (any problems put you in waiting support queue)
- "Big" != Good (IMHO), would you pay for read-only cache implementation $14,400.00 per PVU and deploy giant objectgrid.jar (15M) for this very purpose? Yikes!
I'm going to talk with project sponsor about better ways to spend money (my salary increase, maybe ;-) ). Seriously: free EHCache / OSCache are more than sufficient for the task. They are small and Open Source.
"Do not hire Godzilla to pull Santa's sleigh, reindeers are better for this purpose" - Bart Simpson.
