WebSphere® eXtreme Scale is primarily used as a data grid and cache for Java™ objects. You can use several APIs to interact with the eXtreme Scale grid to access and store these objects.
This topic describes some of the common APIs and some of the concepts that you must be aware of when choosing an API and deployment topology. See the Architecture and topology topic for a description of the various services and topologies that eXtreme Scale provides.
WebSphere eXtreme Scale's central component is the ObjectGrid. The ObjectGrid is the namespace that stores related data, and contains sets of hash maps, each holding key-value pairs. These maps can be grouped together and partitioned and made highly available and scalable.
Because the grid holds Java objects by nature, there are some important considerations when designing an application so that the grid can store and access data efficiently. Factors that can affect scalability, performance and memory utilization include the following.