[infinispan-dev] Please review proposal for Spring Infinispan as a Spring extension

I'm currently working on implementing Spring's forthcoming cache SPI for Infinispan, aiming to contribute the results back to Spring. Since Spring is unlikely to accept cache providers besides EHCache in spring-context itself, I originally planned on making Spring Infinispan a part of Spring Modules. However, Spring Modules has been phased out, and Spring Extensions has taken its place. Le roi et mort, vive le roi. In order to have Spring Infinispan accepted as an official Spring extension I need to fill out a form detailing scope, purpose and benefit of the proposed extension. Below is my first attempt at doing so. Since this touches on how Infinispan will be perceived in the greater developer community, and since noone has yet accused me of being overly diplomatic, I herewith ask you to review this form and to not hesitate to offer constructive criticism. Cheers, Olaf Extension Proposal Pack This document is part of the Proposal pack for requesting a new extension. Please modify the following sections and submit back to the current project lead at SpringSource, or alternatively extensions(a)springsource.com Naming Each Extension has several names, a publicly visible name and an SVN name. This is actually quite an important aspect, as the name has to be intuitive and distinct from every other Extension. The naming convention for the internal name is "se-xxx", if it is a .NET Extension, the naming convention is "se-xxx.net". Proposed Name: Spring Infinispan ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Description and Background What is the purpose of the Extension. What does it do, why is it needed, how did it evolve etc. Description: Spring Infinispan will primarily provide an implementation of Spring 3.1's cache SPI, namely * org.springframework.cache.Cache und * org.springframework.cache.CacheManager, backed by the high-performance distributed cache INFINISPAN: http://www.jboss.org/infinispan. In addition, Spring Infinispan will offer implementations of Spring's FactoryBean interface for producing * native Infinispan caches, * native Infinispan cache managers, * Infinispan configuration instances, * ... within a Spring context. Spring Infinispan's overarching goal is to make Infinispan a good and well-behaved citizen is Spring land, thus * offering Infinispan users the option to use Spring's popular programming model, and * offering Spring users access to a mature, performant and actively maintained distributed open source cache. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stakeholders Who are the main stakeholders in the Extension? It is important for the stakeholders to be clear to understand potential conflict of interest issues. Stakeholders: At this stage, the only stakeholders in Spring Infinispan is the Infinispan development community, led by Manik Surtani of Red Hat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Competitors/Related Projects Who (if any) are competitors for this Extension. If there are competitors, why would people use this Extension instead of the competitors? Competitors: To the best of my and Google'd knowledge, there is no other effort underway to integrate Infinispan into the Spring ecosystem. And even if not, Spring Infinispan has the bonus of being officially supported by the Infinispan development community. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benefit to SpringSource Why do we care about this? SpringSource Benefit: * According to http://blog.springsource.com/2011/02/23/spring-3-1-m1-caching/ is Spring actively encouraging contributors to implement their forthcoming cache SPI for as many cache providers as possible. Spring Infinispan will be testament to the community's positive response to this call, and may thus encourage other cache providers to follow suit, thereby promoting Spring Cache's popularity. * Developers invested in Infinispan may find Spring an attractive programming model and switch to the Spring framework, thereby further boosting its popularity. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benefit to the Community What benefit does this Extension bring to the community? Community Benefit: * Make a high-performance and rapidly progressing distributed cache accessible using the familiar Spring programming model. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsor Every Extension must have a SpringSource sponsor. If the SpringSource sponsor is already known, they should be listed here. SpringSource Sponsor: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roadmap What is the expected life time for the Extension. When is the first release likely to happen? Try and provide a plan for the next 6-12 months. This doesnʼt form part of the formal contract, merely your best intentions at this time. Roadmap: Spring Infinispan has a well circumscribed scope: implement Spring's Cache SPI and provide some helper classes to make the lifes of Infinispan users easier in Spring land. Therefore, it is currently expected that Spring Infinispan will mature rather rapidly. Once it supports embedded and remote Infinispan caches, its main goals will be achieved. Beyond that, it will depend largely on community feedback if and what further enhancements will be needed. A first version supporting embedded (in-VM) Infinispan caches is likely to go public within the first two months after this proposal has been accepted. A second version additionally supporting remote Infinispan caches should be available at most two months later.