Configure Hibernate Cache

This section provides a complete guide on configuring Hibernate applications with NCache.

Prerequisites to Configure Hibernate Cache

Before configuring Hibernate cache ensure that the following prerequisites are fulfilled:

• For using NCache Hibernate Maven packages for NCache Professional, replace the ncache-hibernate with ncache-professional-hibernate in your pom.xml file.
  
• Make sure to include the following maven dependencies in your pom.xml file.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.alachisoft.ncache</groupId>
    <artifactId>ncache-hibernate</artifactId>
    <version>x.x.x</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
    <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
    <version>x.x.x</version>
</dependency>

Hibernate Cache Configuration

NCache has to be configured in the application's Hibernate configuration file as a second level cache. Following is a sample hibernate configuration file hibernate.cfg.xml with Hibernate cache configuration.

<hibernate-configuration>
  <session-factory>
    <property name="hibernate.cache.use_second_level_cache">true</property>
    <property name="hibernate.cache.region.factory_class">com.alachisoft.ncache.NCacheRegionFactory</property>
    <property name="ncache.application_id">myapp</property>
    <property name="hibernate.cache.use_query_cache">true</property>
  </session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

Properties added in the Hibernate’s configuration files are explained as under:

• Enable the use of a second level cache in your application by adding the following property in the Hibernate configuration section's session-factory tag:

<property name="hibernate.cache.use_second_level_cache">true</property>

• Configure NCache as Hibernate's second level cache provider. For Hibernate 3.6+, add the following property in Hibernate's configuration file under the session-factory tag:

<property name="hibernate.cache.region.factory_class">com.alachisoft.ncache.NCacheRegionFactory</property>

hibernate.cache.region.factory_class: This option lets you specify NCache's region cache factory class for Hibernate 3.6+. Hibernate will use this cache factory class to initialize and use NCache as a second level cache.

hibernate.cache.provider_class: This option lets you specify NCache as a second level cache provider. You need to mention NCache's cache provider class for Hibernate cache. This is how it knows how to call second-level cache.

• NCache provider for Hibernate identifies each application by an application-id that is later used to find the appropriate configuration for that application from the NCache configuration file for Hibernate ncache-hibernate.xml. This application-id must be specified in Hibernate's configuration file. Add the following property in Hibernate's configuration session-factory tag for this purpose:

<property name="ncache.application_id">myapp</property>

• To use NCache as a query cache, enable the query cache by adding the following property:

<property name="hibernate.cache.use_query_cache">true</property>

See Also

Initialize Cache
Hibernate First Level Cache
Configure Cacheable Objects and Regions
Use Query Caching