9.3.6. Transforming Cache Loaders

The way cached data is written to FileCacheLoader and JDBCCacheLoader based cache stores has changed in JBoss Cache 2.0 in such way that these cache loaders now write and read data using the same marshaling framework used to replicate data across the network. Such change is trivial for replication purposes as it just requires the rest of the nodes to understand this format. However, changing the format of the data in cache stores brings up a new problem: how do users, which have their data stored in JBoss Cache 1.x.x format, migrate their stores to JBoss Cache 2.0 format?

With this in mind, JBoss Cache 2.0 comes with two cache loader implementations called org.jboss.cache.loader.TransformingFileCacheLoader and org.jboss.cache.loader.TransformingJDBCCacheLoader located within the optional jbosscache-cacheloader-migration.jar file. These are one-off cache loaders that read data from the cache store in JBoss Cache 1.x.x format and write data to cache stores in JBoss Cache 2.0 format.

The idea is for users to modify their existing cache configuration file(s) momentarily to use these cache loaders and for them to create a small Java application that creates an instance of this cache, recursively reads the entire cache and writes the data read back into the cache. Once the data is transformed, users can revert back to their original cache configuration file(s). In order to help the users with this task, a cache loader migration example has been constructed which can be located under the examples/cacheloader-migration directory within the JBoss Cache distribution. This example, called examples.TransformStore , is independent of the actual data stored in the cache as it writes back whatever it was read recursively. It is highly recommended that anyone interested in porting their data run this example first, which contains a readme.txt file with detailed information about the example itself, and also use it as base for their own application.