Use JCache providers to create caches for a specification compliant implementation. Those providers abstract the platform specific behavior and bindings, and provide the different JCache required features.

Hazelcast has two types of providers. Depending on your application setup and the cluster topology, you can use the Client Provider (used by Hazelcast clients) or the Server Provider (used by cluster members).

Configuring JCache Providers

Configure the JCache javax.cache.spi.CachingProvider by either specifying the provider at the command line or by declaring the provider inside the Hazelcast configuration XML file. For more information on setting properties in this XML configuration file, please see the JCache Declarative Configuration section.

Hazelcast implements a delegating CachingProvider that can automatically be configured for either client or member mode and that delegates to the real underlying implementation based on the user's choice. Hazelcast recommends that you use this CachingProvider implementation.

The delegating CachingProviders fully qualified class name is

com.hazelcast.cache.HazelcastCachingProvider

To configure the delegating provider at the command line, add the following parameter to the Java startup call, depending on the chosen provider:

-Dhazelcast.jcache.provider.type=[client|server]

By default, the delegating CachingProvider is automatically picked up by the JCache SPI and provided as shown above. In cases where multiple javax.cache.spi.CachingProvider implementations reside on the classpath (like in some Application Server scenarios), you can select a CachingProvider by explicitly calling Caching::getCachingProvider overloads and providing them using the canonical class name of the provider to be used. The class names of member and client providers provided by Hazelcast are mentioned in the following two subsections.



image NOTE: Hazelcast advises that you use the Caching::getCachingProvider overloads to select a CachingProvider explicitly. This ensures that uploading to later environments or Application Server versions doesn't result in unexpected behavior like choosing a wrong CachingProvider.

For more information on cluster topologies and Hazelcast clients, please see the Hazelcast Topology section.