[hibernate-dev] [ISPN-6] Switch to distribution for default entity/collection cache?

Hi, While working on documenting the Infinispan cache provider, I've been thinking on the default cache settings for each Hibernate type: - Entity/Collection: Bearing in mind the requirement to keep this cache synchronous, in the past we've gone for invalidation rather than replication because using replication could mean having to replicate a lot of data to all nodes in the cluster. For Infinispan however, I was thinking of the possibility of making sync distribution default for entities though since we are not replicating to everyone any more. One doubt I have about here is how much of an advantage would be to bring an entity from another node in the cluster if present (distribution) vs loading it from the database if not available in the local cache (invalidation). The one downside I see of distribution vs invalidation is that if an entity is not available locally and is not available in the cluster, distribution is more expensive that invalidation, since dist involves round trip in cluster and round trip to database, vs round trip to database with invalidation. However, unless eviction kicks in, this should only affect the 1st time an entity/collection is queried cos the next time, it will be distributed already and potentially in the L1 of the node that requested it if it's not one of the owners. So, I think I would make distribution default for entity/collection. Thoughts? I'd still leave an invalidated configuration in the default config file so that people can potentially swap to it if they want to. - Query: I think we should stick to same JBC2/3 default here which is local. - Timestamps: Given the chattiness of this cache, and the low size payloads, asynchronous replication still looks to me like a good default for this cache. Cheers, -- Galder Zamarreño Sr. Software Engineer Infinispan, JBoss Cache