POJO Cache currently uses JBoss AOP to intercept field operations. If a class has been properly instrumented (by either using the @Replicable annotation, or if the object has already been advised by JBoss AOP), then a cache interceptor is added during an attach() call. Afterward, any field modification will invoke the corresponding CacheFieldInterceptor instance. Below is a schematic illustration of this process.

Only fields, and not methods are intercepted, since this is the most efficient and accurate way to gaurantee the same data is visible on all nodes in the cluster. Further, this allows for objects that do not conform to the JavaBean specficiation to be replicable. There are two important aspects of field interception:

The figure below illustrates both field read and write operations. Once an POJO is managed by POJO Cache (i.e., after an attach() method has been called), JBoss Aop will invoke the CacheFieldInterceptor every time a class operates on a field. The cache is always consulted, since it is in control of the mapped data (i.e. it gaurantess the state changes made by other nodes in the cluster are visible). Afterwords, the in-memmory copy is updated. This is mainly to allow transaction rollbacks to restore the previous state of the object.