This is a book about Ehcache, a widely used open source Java cache. Ehcache has grown in size and scope since it was introduced in October 2003. As people used it they often noticed it was missing a feature they wanted. Over time, the features that were repeatedly asked for, and make sense for a Cache, have been added.
Ehcache is now used for Hibernate caching, data access object caching, security credential caching, web caching, SOAP and RESTful server caching, application persistence and distributed caching.
In August 2009, Ehcache was acquired by Terracotta, Inc.
The intended audience for this book is developers who use ehcache. It should be able to be used to start from scratch, get up and running quickly, and also be useful for the more complex options.
Ehcache is about performance and load reduction of underlying resources. Another natural audience is performance specialists.
It is also intended for application and enterprise architects. Some of the features of ehcache, such as distributed caching and Java EE caching, are alternatives to be considered along with other ways of solving those problems. This book discusses the trade-offs in Ehcache's approach to help make a decision about appropriateness of use.
Ehcache has had many contributions in the form of forum discussions, feature requests, bug reports, patches and code commits.
Rather than try and list the many hundreds of people who have contributed to Ehcache in some way it is better to link to the web site where contributions are acknowledged in the following ways:
Adam Murdoch (an all round top Java coder) came up with the name in a moment of inspiration while we were stuck on the SourceForge project create page. Ehcache is a palindrome. He thought the name was wicked cool and we agreed.
The logo is similarly symmetrical, and is evocative of the diagram symbol for a doubly-linked list. That structure lies at the heart of ehcache.