Infinispan Query breaks into 4.0.0.CR1

Hello all,

Querying is an important feature for Infinispan, so we've decided to include a technology preview of this for 4.0.0.CR1 and 4.0.0.GA, even though it is only really scheduled for Infinispan 4.1.0.

Browse to this wiki page to see how the new API works for querying, along with usage examples.

Origins
Some of the API has come from JBoss Cache Searchable but has been enhanced and runs slicker. A lot more work is being done under the hood so it makes it easier for users. For example, the API method on the QueryFactory.getBasicQuery() just needs two Strings and builds a basic Lucene Query instance, as opposed to forcing the user to create a Lucene query manually. This is still possible however, should a user want to create a more complex query.

The indexing for Lucene is now done through interceptors as opposed to listeners, and hence more tightly integrated into Infinispan's core.

You can also choose how indexes are maintained. If indexes are shared (perhaps stored on a network mounted drive), then you only want nodes to index changes made locally. On the other hand, if each node maintains its own indexes (either in-memory on on a local filesystem) then you want each node to index changes made, regardless of where the changes are made. This behaviour is controlled by a system property - -Dinfinispan.query.indexLocalOnly=true. However, this is system property temporary and will be replaced with a proper configuration property once the feature is out of technology preview.

What's coming up?
Future releases of Hibernate Search and Infinispan will have improvements that will change the way that querying works. The QueryHelper class - as documented in the wiki - is temporary so that will eventually be removed, as you will not need to provide the class definitions of the types you wish to index upfront. We will be able to detect this on the fly (see HSEARCH-397)

There will be a better system for running distributed queries. And the system properties will disappear in favour of proper configuration attributes.

And also, GSoC student Lukasz Moren's work involving an Infinispan-based Lucene Directory implementation will allow indexes to be shared cluster-wide by using Infinispan itself to distribute these indexes. All very clever stuff.

Thanks for reading!

Navin.

Infinispan@Devoxx

I will be presenting on Infinispan at Devoxx in Antwerp this November. For details, see:

http://www.devoxx.com/display/DV09/Infinispan+and+the+future+of+data+grids

Remember that you can track where the core Infinispan team will be making public appearances on the Infinispan Talks calendar!

http://www.jboss.org/infinispan/talks

So, see you in Antwerp!

Cheers

Manik

Comparing JBoss Cache, Infinispan and Gigaspaces

Chris Wilk has posted a detailed blog comparing features in JBoss Cache, Infinispan and Gigaspaces.

This well-written article is available here:

http://bigdatamatters.com/bigdatamatters/2009/09/infinispan-vs-gigaspaces.html

and is a good starting point for more in-depth analysis and comparison.

Cheers

Manik

Introducing the Infinispan (REST) server

Introducing the Infinispan RESTful server !



The Infinispan RESTful server combines the whole grain goodness of RESTEasy (JAX-RS, or JSR-311) with Infinispan to provide a web-ready RESTful data grid.

Recently I (Michael) spoke to Manik about an interesting use case, and he indicated great interest in such a server. It wasn't a huge amount of work to do the initial version - given that JAX-RS is designed to make things easy.

For those that don't know: RESTful design is using the well proven and established http/web standards for providing services (as a simple alternative to WS-*) - if that still isn't enough, you can read more here. So for Infinispan that means that any type of client can place data in the Infinispan grid.

So what would you use it for?
For non java clients, or clients where you need to use HTTP as the transport mechanism for caching/data grid needs. A content delivery network (?) - push data into the grid, let Infinispan spread it around and serve it out via the nearest server. See here for details on using http and URLs with it.

In terms of clients - you only need HTTP - no binary dependencies or libraries needed (the wiki page has some samples in ruby/python, also in the project source).

Where does it live?
The server is a module in Infinispan under /server/rest (for the moment, we may re-arrange the sources at a later date).

Getting it.
Currently you can download the war from the wiki page, or build it yourself (as it is still new, early days). This is at present a war file (tested on JBoss AS and Jetty) which should work in most containers - we plan to deliver a stand alone server (with an embedded JBoss AS) Real Soon Now.

Questions: (find me on the dev list, or poke around the wiki).


Implemented in scala: After chatting with Manik and co, we decided this would serve as a good test bed to "test the waters" on Scala - so this module is written in scala - it worked just fine with RESTEasy, and Infinispan (which one would reasonably expect, but nice when things do work as advertised !).