Infinispan Explained

Infinispan
Infinispan
Developer:	Red Hat
Latest Release Version:	14.0.7.Final
Programming Language:	Java
Platform:	Platform independent
Genre:	Data Grid
License:	Apache Software License 2.0

Infinispan is a distributed cache and key-value NoSQL data store software developed by Red Hat. Java applications can embed it as library, use it as a service in WildFly^[1] or any non-java applications^[2] can use it, as remote service through TCP/IP.^[3]

History

Infinispan is the successor of JBoss Cache. The project was announced in 2009.

Features

• Transactions
• MapReduce
• Support for LRU and LIRS eviction algorithms
• Through pluggable architecture, infinispan is able to persist data to filesystem, relational databases with JDBC, LevelDB, NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Apache Cassandra or HBase and others.^[4]

Usage

Typical use-cases for Infinispan include:

• Distributed cache, often in front of a database
• Storage for temporal data, like web sessions
• In-memory data processing and analytics
• Cross-JVM communication and shared storage
• MapReduce Implementation in the In-Memory Data Grid.

Infinispan is also used in academia and research as a framework for distributed execution and storage.

• Cloud2Sim^[5] leverages Infinispan for its distributed execution of MapReduce workflows and simulations.
• MEDIator data sharing synchronization platform for medical image archives^[6] leverages Infinispan as its distributed in-memory storage, as well as distributed execution framework.
• Cassowary^[7] uses Infinispan to store the context information in-memory, in order to provide the middleware platform for context-aware smart buildings.

See also

• Ehcache
• Hazelcast
• Apache Ignite
• GridGain
• Java Transaction API

References

• Book: Adamski, T. . Hands-On Cloud Development with WildFly: Develop, deploy, and configure cloud-based, enterprise Java applications with WildFly Swarm and OpenShift . Packt Publishing . 2018 . 978-1-78728-380-0 . June 20, 2023.

Notes and References

1. Book: 9781849518222. Infinispan Data Grid Platform. Francesco Marchioni and Manik Surtani. 2012.
2. Web site: Infinispan: the Start of a New Era in Open Source Data Grids. Manik Surtani.
3. Web site: Infinispan. Manik Surtani.
4. Web site: Infinispan User Guide. 2016-08-24. 2016-08-29. https://web.archive.org/web/20160829152512/http://infinispan.org/docs/stable/user_guide/user_guide.html. dead.
5. Pradeeban . Kathiravelu . Luís . Veiga . An Adaptive Distributed Simulator for Cloud and MapReduce Algorithms and Architectures . IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC), 2014 . 79–88 . 8 December 2014 . London . 10.1109/UCC.2014.16 .
6. Pradeeban . Kathiravelu . Ashish . Sharma . MEDIator: A Data Sharing Synchronization Platform for Heterogeneous Medical Image Archives . Workshop on Connected Health at Big Data Era (BigCHat'15), co-located with 21 st ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2015) . 10 August 2015 . Sydney . 2 January 2016.
7. Pradeeban . Kathiravelu . Leila . Sharifi . Luís . Veiga . Cassowary: Middleware Platform for Context-Aware Smart Buildings with Software-Defined Sensor Networks . pdf . Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Middleware for Context-Aware Applications in the IoT . 1–6 . 8 December 2015 . Vancouver . 2 January 2016 . http://www.navigators.di.fc.ul.pt/w2/img_auth.php/9/90/Navtalk20151120_Kathiravelu.paper.pdf . 8 December 2015.