Configuration overhaul

Infinispan 5.2 will sport a much needed configuration overhaul which will affect both the programmatic builder API and the declarative XML parsing.

As you all know by now, 5.1 introduced a new fluent builder-based API with immutable POJOs for configuring Infinispan's core. This coolness however was not extended to all the extra modules available for Infinispan (and there are quite a few of those), leaving them with a simple untyped key/value properties-based configuration. This was especially visible (and painful) when configuring the cache loaders, some of which have a plethora of parameters and options.

In 5.2 modules become first-class citizens and can provide their own builders and can take care of parsing their own XML for which they can provide a custom schema (for editors/IDE which provide content-assist). Modules can retrieve information from either the GlobalConfiguration or the per-cache Configuration objects via the T modules(Class<T> moduleClass) method.

Loaders and Stores also get this treatment. Look at the two before and after configurations below for configuring the JDBC Cache Store.

Before:

After:

You will be able to check-out these features in Infinispan 5.2.0.Alpha3. Bear in mind that at the time of writing not all cache loaders have been migrated to this new configuration style, but they should all be complete by the time 5.2.0.Final is released.

If you want to learn how to extend Infinispan's configuration for your own modules, head over to ExtendingInfinispansConfiguration which should provide all the information you need