Chapter 1. Introduction
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Chapter 1. Introduction

Table of Contents

1.1. What's new in 3.0?
1.2. Upgrading from 2.x versions
1.3. Getting Started (Tutorial)

Hazelcast is a clustering and highly scalable data distribution platform for Java. Hazelcast helps architects and developers to easily design and develop faster, highly scalable and reliable applications for their businesses.

To install Hazelcast:

Hazelcast is pure Java. JVMs that are running Hazelcast will dynamically cluster. Although by default Hazelcast will use multicast for discovery, it can also be configured to only use TCP/IP for environments where multicast is not available or preferred (Click here for more info). Communication among cluster members is always TCP/IP with Java NIO beauty. Default configuration comes with 1 backup so if one node fails, no data will be lost. It is as simple as usingjava.util.{Queue, Set, List, Map}. Just add the hazelcast.jar into your classpath and start coding.

1.1. What's new in 3.0?

Core architecture:

  • Multi-thread execution: Operations are now executed by multiple threads (by factor of processor cores). With Hazelcast 2, there was a only single thread.
  • SPI: Service Programming Interface for developing new partitioned services, data structures. All Hazelcast data structures like Map, Queue are reimplemented with SPI.

Serialization

  • IdentifiedDataSerializable: A slightly optimized version of DataSerializable that doesn't use class name and reflection for de-serialization.
  • Portable Serialization: Another Serialization interface that doesn't use reflection and can navigate through binary data and fetch/query/index individual field without having any reflection or whole object de-serialization.
  • Custom Serialization: Support for custom serialization that can be plugged into Hazelcast.

Map

  • Entry Processor : Executing an EntryProcessor on the key or on all entries. Hazelcast implicitly locks the entree and guarantees no migration while the execution of the Processor.
  • In Memory Format : Support for storing entries in Binary, Object and Cached format.
  • Continuous Query : Support for listeners that register with a query and are notified when there is a change on the Map that matches the Query.
  • Interceptors : Ability to intercept the Map operation before/after it is actually executed.
  • Lazy Indexing :Ability to index existing items in the map. No need to add indexes at the very beginning.

Queue

  • No more dependency on the distributed map
  • Scales really well as you have thousands of separate queues.
  • Persistence Support for persistence with QueueStore.

Multimap

  • Values can be Set/List/Queue.

Topic

  • Total Ordering : Support for global ordering where all Nodes receive all messages in the same order.

Transactions

Client

  • New Binary Protocol: A new binary protocol based on portable serialization. The same protocol is used for Java/C/C# and other client
  • Smart client: Support for dummy and smart client. Where a dummy client will maintain a connection to only one member, whereas the smart client can route the operations to the Node that owns the data.

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In-Memory Data Grid - Hazelcast | Documentation Home 1.2. Upgrading from 2.x versions