JCache Session Persistence
1.0

This feature enables persistence of HTTP sessions using JCache. Persisting HTTP session data using JCache allows for high performance HTTP session persistence without the use of a relational database. Failover of HTTP sessions can be achieved by configuring multiple servers to persist data to the same location.

Enabling this feature

To enable the JCache Session Persistence 1.0 feature, add the following element declaration into your server.xml file, inside the featureManager element:

<feature>sessionCache-1.0</feature>

Examples

Persist HTTP session data with Hazelcast as the JCache provider

The sessionCache feature does not include a JCache implementation, so you must pick one and reference it as a library in your server.xml file. You must define a location for the implementation files with the library element and reference that library by specifying the jCacheLibraryRef attribute for the cachingProvider element.

In the following example, Hazelcast is specified as the JCache implementation. The library element specifies that Hazelcast must be used as the JCache provider, which is located in the hazelcast.jar library.

<library id="JCacheLib">
    <file name="${shared.resource.dir}/hazelcast/hazelcast.jar"/>
</library>

<httpSessionCache cacheManagerRef="CacheManager"/>

<cacheManager id="CacheManager" >
    <cachingProvider jCacheLibraryRef="JCacheLib" />
</cacheManager>

Customizing the JCache implementation

You can provide a configuration file to customize how your JCache implementation manages HTTP session caching. To specify the file location, use the uri attribute for the cacheManager element. In the following example, the uri attribute specifies the location of a Hazelcast configuration file:

The following example shows the configuration of session persistence with Hazelcast as the JCache provider:

<library id="JCacheLib">
    <file name="${shared.resource.dir}/hazelcast/hazelcast.jar"/>
</library>
<httpSessionCache cacheManagerRef="CacheManager"/>
<cacheManager id="CacheManager"
    uri="file:${shared.resource.dir}/hazelcast/hazelcast.xml">
    <cachingProvider jCacheLibraryRef="JCacheLib" />
</cacheManager>

The Hazelcast configuration file is optional. For more information, see Distributed session caching.

Specify JCache vendor-specific properties

In the following example, Open Liberty is configured to access cached HTTP session data from a remote Infinispan server in client/server mode on OpenShift. Vendor-specific Infinispan properties are passed to the JCache implementation in the properties element:

<library id="InfinispanLib">
    <fileset dir="${shared.resource.dir}/infinispan" includes="*.jar"/>
</library>
<httpSessionCache cacheManagerRef="CacheManager"/>
<cacheManager id="CacheManager">
    <properties
        infinispan.client.hotrod.server_list="infinispan-server:11222"
        infinispan.client.hotrod.auth_username="sampleUser"
        infinispan.client.hotrod.auth_password="samplePassword"
        infinispan.client.hotrod.auth_realm="default"
        infinispan.client.hotrod.sasl_mechanism="PLAIN"
        infinispan.client.hotrod.java_serial_whitelist=".*"
        infinispan.client.hotrod.marshaller=
            "org.infinispan.commons.marshall.JavaSerializationMarshaller"/>
    <cachingProvider jCacheLibraryRef="InfinispanLib" />
</cacheManager>

Standard API packages provided by this feature

  • javax.cache

  • javax.cache.annotation

  • javax.cache.configuration

  • javax.cache.event

  • javax.cache.expiry

  • javax.cache.integration

  • javax.cache.management

  • javax.cache.processor

  • javax.cache.spi

Supported Java versions

  • JavaSE-1.8

  • JavaSE-11.0

  • JavaSE-17.0

  • JavaSE-20.0

Developing a feature that depends on this feature

If you are developing a feature that depends on this feature, include the following item in the Subsystem-Content header in your feature manifest file.

com.ibm.websphere.appserver.sessionCache-1.0; type="osgi.subsystem.feature"