currently hibernate version is 3.2.5 and there is still something basic missing: cache injection.

while you are using spring or another container you can configure hibernate by injection. e.g:your own datasource definition,your dialect , your hibernate interceptors.

but you can not inject your caching mechanism because hibernate only accept hibernate.cache.provider_class

Result: you can not share your caching mechanism with hibernate or manage hibernate caching mechanism.

<bean id="MySessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="mappingResources">
<list>
<value>mappings/Book.hbm.xml</value>
<value>mappings/Patron.hbm.xml</value>
<value>mappings/BorrowRecord.hbm.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<props>
<prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.query.substitutions">true=1 false=0</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.show_sql">false</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.use_outer_join">false</prop>
</props>
</property>
<property name="dataSource"><ref bean="MyDataSource"/></property>
</bean>

some good idea to look : Caching the result of methods using Spring and EHCache

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