JBoss Cache is a replicated and transactional cache. It is replicated since multiple JBoss Cache instances can be distributed (either within the same JVM or across several JVMs whether they reside on the same machine or on different machines on a network) and data is replicated across the whole group. It is transactional because a user can configure a JTA compliant transaction manager and make any cache interaction transactional, and caches would participate in ongoing JTA transactions. Note that the cache can also be run without any replication; this is the local mode.

JBoss Cache comes in two flavours: Core and POJO versions. The core library (using the org.jboss.cache.Cache interface) is the underlying library that organises data in a tree-like structure and handles all locking, passivation, eviction and replication characteristics of data in the cache. The POJO library (using the org.jboss.cache.pojo.PojoCache interface) is built atop the core library and allows introspection of objects in the cache providing transparent coherence by using JBoss AOP. Note that the POJO edition of JBoss Cache (often referred to as POJO Cache) comes with a separate set of documentation (Users' Guide, FAQ, etc.) available on the JBoss Cache documentation website.

JBoss Cache is made available in one of four different packages:

JBoss Cache has an active community of developers and contributors. The project was founded by Bela Ban and is currently led by Manik Surtani. Jason Greene is the lead for the POJO Cache subsystem, and other contributors both past and present include Ben Wang, Harald Gliebe, Brian Stansberry, Vladimir Blagojevic, Mircea Markus, Jimmy Wilson, Galder Zamarreño and Elias Ross.

JBoss Cache is licensed under LGPL, anOSI-approved open source license.

The JBoss Cache product download page has prebuilt binaries as well as source distributions. You can also grab snapshots from the JBoss.org subversion repository. See the JBoss Cache development wiki page for details.

Read the README-Maven.txt file in the source root. Note that you will need a JDK >= 5.0, and Apache Maven >= 2.0.6.

JBoss Cache is baselined on Java 5 and is tested on Java 5 and 6 VMs. If, for whatever reason you have to use Java 1.4, you could build a retroweaved version of the core cache library that is Java 1.4 compatible, using the simple instructions on this wiki page on building and running JBoss Cache on Java 1.4. .

java -jar jbosscache-core.jar will spit out version details.

Absolutely! Even though JBoss Cache comes integrated with JBoss Application Server, it can also be used in any other Java EE server such as BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere or Tomcat. It can also run in a standalone Java process, completely outside of an application server. See the Users' Guide for more details.

Look at this wiki page for help.

JBoss Cache 3.x is API compatible with 2.x, although as far as possible you should refactor your code not to use deprecated methods as these may disappear in future releases of JBoss Cache.

JBoss Cache 3.x comes with an all new configuration format. Old 2.x configuration files will still work, although you will get a warning in the logs about this. Again, as far as possible, we recommend migrating your configuration file to the new format. Scripts are provided with the JBoss Cache 3.x distribution to migrate configuration files (see config2to3.sh andconfig2to3.bat).

Note that to take advantage of some of the new features in JBoss Cache 3.x, you need to be using the new configuration format.

Please report any bugs or problems to JBoss Cache User Forum.