JCS status

[Brian McKeough <bm...@csc.com>]

Hello All,

I'm investigating caching frameworks for a consulting project and am 
interested in feedback on the status of JCS.  Neither the developer nor 
the user mailing lists seem to have much activity, and the source 
repository shows most of the source files not having been updated in 
several months.  Is this because the project is mature or because it has 
been somewhat abandoned?  No offense meant.

Brian
Senior Consultant
Computer Sciences Corp.
bmckeoug@csc.com
Office: 630 472 2598
Cell: 630 841 8744
Client: 312 653 5546


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Re: JCS status

[James Taylor <ja...@jamestaylor.org>]

"stephenh" <st...@chase3000.com> writes:

> I'm going to venture that the project is both mature and abandoned.
>
> ...
>
> Hibernate people chose JCS to integrate with, so I'm not sure why the
> original developers aren't still around, or that it hasn't gained other
> new developers.

FWIW I believe the original author (Aaron) and all the people who have
contributed since it landed at Jakarta (like me) are still around, or at
least reading the mailing lists.

I think we are all just pretty busy.

As for why there are no new developers, I can't say. I keep hoping somebody
will find a task they are interested in tackling and submit some patches, I
think we'd all be happy to get some more people with commit access. Somebody
just needs to do it. 

> I could be completely wrong, but I seem to remember the original author
> (or perhaps one of the main contributors) works on a commercial caching
> system as well as JCS. Ideally, whoever the commercial entity is, they
> could move to having JCS be their base implementation (or having their
> product become JCS) and then sell services related to it. But I
> certainly why they'd want to keep it commercial as well.

I don't know anything about a commercial offering. There are people at
Jakarta who work for some of the cache vendors, but I don't think any of them
have contributed to JCS.

> If any of the main developers would like to chip in as to their thoughts
> on JCS's production capabilities, I'm sure both Brian and I would
> appreciate it.

My impression of JCS is that it is still a little confusing, but it seems to
work. I've used it in production, we have lots of reports of people using it
in production, great! I'd still like to see some more modularization of
things (like more clearly defining how auxiliaries interface with the core)
and more work on making JCS more flexible.

-- jt

RE: JCS status

[stephenh <st...@chase3000.com>]

Hi Brian,

I'm not entirely sure what the status is, as I've just been lurking on
the list for long awhile now, but we've successfully used JCS in two
projects. One was working directly with the JCS API in a Turbine project
and the second is via the very nice integration Hibernate has with JCS
for Hibernate-wide caching of objects already loaded from the database.

In both instances it's worked really well and noticeably speeds up the
app, though I have to admit we haven't put it through really good stress
testing that could potentially reveal small bugs here and there.

I'm going to venture that the project is both mature and abandoned.

In terms of being mature, it has, from the little I know of the code
base as I've only used the API, a stable code base.

I'm not quite sure it was abandoned...I think everyone is really
interested in seeing a successful caching project at Jakarta, e.g. the
Hibernate people chose JCS to integrate with, so I'm not sure why the
original developers aren't still around, or that it hasn't gained other
new developers.

I could be completely wrong, but I seem to remember the original author
(or perhaps one of the main contributors) works on a commercial caching
system as well as JCS. Ideally, whoever the commercial entity is, they
could move to having JCS be their base implementation (or having their
product become JCS) and then sell services related to it. But I
certainly why they'd want to keep it commercial as well.

If any of the main developers would like to chip in as to their thoughts
on JCS's production capabilities, I'm sure both Brian and I would
appreciate it.

Thanks,
Stephen