This is the official JBoss Cache Users' Guide. Along with its accompanying documents (an FAQ, a tutorial and a whole set of documents on POJO Cache), this is freely available on the JBoss Cache documentation website.

When used, JBoss Cache refers to JBoss Cache Core, a tree-structured, clustered, transactional cache. POJO Cache, also a part of the JBoss Cache distribution, is documented separately. (POJO Cache is a cache that deals with Plain Old Java Objects, complete with object relationships, with the ability to cluster such POJOs while maintaining their relationships. Please see the POJO Cache documentation for more information about this.)

This book is targeted at developers wishing to use JBoss Cache as either a standalone in-memory cache, a distributed or replicated cache, a clustering library, or an in-memory database. It is targeted at application developers who wish to use JBoss Cache in their code base, as well as "OEM" developers who wish to build on and extend JBoss Cache features. As such, this book is split into two major sections - one detailing the "User" API and the other going much deeper into specialist topics and the JBoss Cache architecture.

In general, a good knowledge of the Java programming language along with a strong appreciation and understanding of transactions and concurrent programming is necessary. No prior knowledge of JBoss Application Server is expected or required.

For further discussion, use the user forum available on the JBoss Cache website. We also provide a mechanism for tracking bug reports and feature requests on the JBoss Cache JIRA issue tracker.

If you are interested in the development of JBoss Cache or in translating this documentation into other languages, we'd love to hear from you. Please post a message on the JBoss Cache user forum or contact us by using the JBoss Cache developer mailing list.

This book is specifically targeted at the JBoss Cache release of the same version number. It may not apply to older or newer releases of JBoss Cache. It is important that you use the documentation appropriate to the version of JBoss Cache you intend to use.

I always appreciate feedback, suggestions and corrections, and these should be directed to the developer mailing list rather than direct emails to any of the authors. We hope you find this book useful, and wish you happy reading!

Manik Surtani, October 2008