Thinking a bit more about this since we spoke yesterday; I think this can become a problem since even a node with no data still has an overhead and an impact on memory. I think they should still be considered for eviction. The whole purpose behind JBCACHE-1153 is so that certain nodes can be considered structural and not considered for eviction since they are just "path builders" rather than data buckets. Can't we just use the resident flag for this purpose instead? See my comment on http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4097183#... about tombstones and invalid nodes. It shows how you could have empty nodes with no data, that *should* be considered for eviction. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4097184#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...