Hazelcast IMDG Provides 'Near Cache' Beyond Java Clients
In-memory data grid (IMDG) specialist Hazelcast Inc. today announced the release of the latest update of its namesake product. With Hazelcast IMDG 3.9, the company continues to expand its traditional focus on Java to provide near cache capabilities to all clients, including Scala, .NET, C#, C++, Python and Node.js.
The ability to create an independent grid on each client that serves as a cache for remote, server-side cache -- what's known as "near cache" -- is a capability that is unique to IMDGs, explained Hazelcast CEO Greg Luck
"It's an extra cache inside the client," Luck told ADTMag. "A near cache is fast because it provides local in-memory access to a subset of the entire cached data set that is stored remotely. It's something only in-memory data grids do."
Enhanced application speed is the chief of benefit of using near cache, Luck explained. It's often used to serve a small subset of "very hot" items with minimal latency. When an entry is found in a near cache, it can be immediately returned to the caller and involved no network communication.
In older versions of Hazelcast's IMDG, near cache keys were stored as serialized Binary Large Objects (BLOBs), which meant that keys were serialized with each get request, and that impacted application performance. IMDG 3.9 mitigates this impact by allowing de-serialized objects to be used as near-cache keys, Luck said. Near-cache lookups now drop down to high nanosecond times, making near cache as fast as dedicated in-process caches, he said.
The Hazelcast IMDG is an open source product distributed under an Apache 2 license that allows developers to include the grid in their applications. Hazelcast Enterprise is the commercially supported version.
One of the most-requested upgrades from the Hazelcast user community included in this release, Luck said, is the ability to configure data structures dynamically. In previous versions, users had to provide all configurations upfront, and there was no supported way to submit, for example, a new IMap configuration into a running cluster. Version 3.9 also allows users to submit new configurations into a running cluster; Hazelcast automatically distributes this configuration to all cluster members.
Hazelcast IMDG 3.9 also adds support for high-density (HD) memory store indexes (HD IMap always stores indexes in HD memory), and rolling upgrades (customers can upgrade their 3.8 cluster into 3.9 without any outage).
Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hazelcast has roots planted deeply in the Java language and platform (its IMDG is written in Java), but the company has spread its support over the years, thanks in part to the efforts of its open source community, to include several clients and programming languages.
Posted by John K. Waters on October 25, 2017