1장. Configuring cache encoding

Encoding is the format, identified by a media type, that Data Grid uses to store entries (key/value pairs) in caches.

Remote caches

Data Grid Server stores entries in remote caches with the encoding that is set in the cache configuration.

Hot Rod and REST clients include a media type with each request they make to Data Grid Server. To handle multiple clients making read and write requests with different media types, Data Grid Server converts data on-demand to and from the media type that is set in the cache configuration.

If the remote cache does not have any encoding configuration, Data Grid Server stores keys and values as generic byte[] without any media type information, which can lead to unexpected results when converting data for clients request different formats.

Data Grid recommends always configuring cache encoding with the application/x-protostream media type if you want to use multiple clients, such as Data Grid Console or CLI, Hot Rod, or REST. ProtoStream encoding also lets you use server-side tasks and perform indexed queries on remote caches.

Embedded caches

Data Grid stores entries in embedded caches as Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs) by default.

For clustered embedded caches, Data Grid needs to marshall any POJOs to a byte array that can be replicated between nodes and then unmarshalled back into POJOs. This means you must ensure that Data Grid can serialize your POJOs with the ProtoStream marshaller if you do not configure another marshaller.