Enterprise data grid overview

[Version 8.6 and later]Enterprise data grids use the eXtremeIO transport mechanism and a new serialization format. With the new transport and serialization format, you can connect both Java™ and .NET clients to the same data grid.

With the enterprise data grid, you can create multiple types of applications, written in different programming languages, to access the same objects in the data grid. In prior releases, data grid applications had to be written in the Java programming language only. With the enterprise data grid function, you can write .NET applications that can create, retrieve, update, and delete objects from the same data grid as the Java application.
Figure 1. Enterprise data grid high-level overview
A trader desktop .NET application uses eXtremeIO to access the same data grid as a WebSphere Application Server-hosted Java application.

Object updates across different applications

Figure 2. Enterprise data grid object update flow
A key is inserted from the .NET application, then the Java application gets and updates the same key. The .NET application can then retrieve the updated value from the data grid.
  1. The .NET client saves data in its format to the data grid.
  2. The data is stored in a universal format, so that when the Java client requests this data it can be converted to Java format.
  3. The Java client updates and re-saves the data.
  4. The .NET client accesses the updated data, during which the data is converted to .NET format.

Transport mechanism

eXtremeIO (XIO) is a cross-platform transport protocol. XIO replaces the Java-bound Object Request Broker (ORB). With the ORB, WebSphere® eXtreme Scale is bound to Java native client applications. XIO is a customized transport mechanism that is specifically targeted for data caching and enables client applications that are in different programming languages to connect to the data grid.

Serialization format

eXtreme data format (XDF) is a cross-platform serialization format. XDF replaces Java serialization on maps that have a copyMode attribute value of COPY_TO_BYTES in the ObjectGrid descriptor XML file. With XDF, performance is faster and data is more compact. In addition, the introduction of XDF enables client applications that are in different programming languages to connect to the same data grid.