Book Image

IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale 6

By : Anthony Chaves
Book Image

IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale 6

By: Anthony Chaves

Overview of this book

A data grid is a means of combining computing resources. Data grids provide a way to distribute object storage and add capacity on demand in the form of CPU, memory, and network resources from additional servers. All three resource types play an important role in how fast data can be processed, and how much data can be processed at once. WebSphere eXtreme Scale provides a solution to scalability issues through caching and grid technology. Working with a data grid requires new approaches to writing highly scalable software; this book covers both the practical eXtreme Scale libraries and design patterns that will help you build scalable software. Starting with a blank slate, this book assumes you don't have experience with IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale. It is a tutorial-style guide detailing the installation of WebSphere eXtreme Scale right through to using the developer libraries. It covers installation and configuration, and discusses the reasons why a data grid is a viable middleware layer. It also covers many different ways of interacting with objects in eXtreme Scale. It will also show you how to use eXtreme Scale in new projects, and integrate it with relational databases and existing applications. This book covers the ObjectMap, Entity, and Query APIs for interacting with objects in the grid. It shows client/server configurations and interactions, as well as the powerful DataGrid API. DataGrid allows us to send code into the grid, which can be run where the data lives. Equally important are the design patterns that go alongside using a data grid. This book covers the major concepts you need to know that prevent your client application from becoming a performance bottleneck. By the end of the book, you'll be able to write software using the eXtreme Scale APIs, and take advantage of a linearly scalable middleware layer.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale 6
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Summary


As usual, we covered a lot of ground in this chapter. This was a good opportunity to discuss what in-memory data grids do well. We also got to see some effects of their relative immaturity. Data grids don't yet have the widespread use held by relational databases. As such, there is a lack of tool support when integrating with an IMDG. The IMDG is also inherently platform-specific now. WebSphere eXtreme Scale caches Java objects themselves, not an interoperable representation. Where interoperability is an issue, relational databases shine.

Fortunately, we've seen how we can integrate our IMDG with our relational database. We can now build new applications using the data grid as a cache, and integrate it with a database for durability, data capacity, and reporting uses.

Configuring an ObjectGrid instance to use a JPALoader of JPAEntityLoader is easy. Starting the flow of objects to SQL to database rows is like turning on a switch. The most important thing to remember when using Loaders...