Question

I have always used the java singleton class for my basic caching needs.
Now the project is using ehcache and without looking deeply into source code, I am not able to figure out what was wrong with the singleton pattern.

i.e What are the benefits of using the ehcahce framework except that the caching can be done by using xml configuration and annotation without writing the boilerplate code (i.e a static HashMap)

Answer 1

It depends on what you need from your caching mechanism. Ehcache provides a lot of cool features, which require a lot of well designed code to do it manually:

• LRU, LFU and FIFO cache eviction policies
• Flexible configuration
• Persistence
• Replication
• many more …

I would recommend you go through them at http://ehcache.org/about/features and decide do you really need something in your project.