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...