Chapter 21. Improving performance

21.4.2. Query cache regions

If you require fine-grained control over query cache expiration policies, you can specify a named cache region for a particular query by calling Query.setCacheRegion().

List blogs = sess.createQuery("from Blog blog where blog.blogger = :blogger")

.setEntity("blogger", blogger)

.setMaxResults(15)

.setCacheable(true)

.setCacheRegion("frontpages")

.list();

If you want to force the query cache to refresh one of its regions (disregard any cached results it finds there) you can use org.hibernate.Query.setCacheMode(CacheMode.REFRESH). In conjunction with the region you have defined for the given query, Hibernate will selectively force the results cached in that particular region to be refreshed. This is particularly useful in cases where underlying data may have been updated via a separate process and is a far more efficient alternative to bulk eviction of the region via org.hibernate.SessionFactory.evictQueries().

21.5. Understanding Collection performance

In the previous sections we have covered collections and their applications. In this section we explore some more issues in relation to collections at runtime.

21.5.1. Taxonomy

Hibernate defines three basic kinds of collections:

•collections of values

•one-to-many associations

•many-to-many associations

This classification distinguishes the various table and foreign key relationships but does not tell us quite everything we need to know about the relational model. To fully understand the relational structure and performance characteristics, we must also consider the structure of the primary key that is used by Hibernate to update or delete collection rows. This suggests the following classification:

•indexed collections

•sets

•bags

All indexed collections (maps, lists, and arrays) have a primary key consisting of the <key> and

<index> columns. In this case, collection updates are extremely efficient. The primary key can be

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Lists, maps, idbags and sets are the most efficient collections to update

efficiently indexed and a particular row can be efficiently located when Hibernate tries to update or delete it.

Sets have a primary key consisting of <key> and element columns. This can be less efficient for some types of collection element, particularly composite elements or large text or binary fields, as the database may not be able to index a complex primary key as efficiently. However, for one-to- many or many-to-many associations, particularly in the case of synthetic identifiers, it is likely to be just as efficient. If you want SchemaExport to actually create the primary key of a <set>, you must declare all columns as not-null="true".

<idbag> mappings define a surrogate key, so they are efficient to update. In fact, they are the best case.

Bags are the worst case since they permit duplicate element values and, as they have no index column, no primary key can be defined. Hibernate has no way of distinguishing between duplicate rows. Hibernate resolves this problem by completely removing in a single DELETE and recreating the collection whenever it changes. This can be inefficient.

For a one-to-many association, the "primary key" may not be the physical primary key of the database table. Even in this case, the above classification is still useful. It reflects how Hibernate "locates" individual rows of the collection.

21.5.2. Lists, maps, idbags and sets are the most efficient

collections to update

From the discussion above, it should be clear that indexed collections and sets allow the most efficient operation in terms of adding, removing and updating elements.

There is, arguably, one more advantage that indexed collections have over sets for many-to-many associations or collections of values. Because of the structure of a Set, Hibernate does not UPDATE a row when an element is "changed". Changes to a Set always work via INSERT and DELETE of individual rows. Once again, this consideration does not apply to one-to-many associations.

After observing that arrays cannot be lazy, you can conclude that lists, maps and idbags are the most performant (non-inverse) collection types, with sets not far behind. You can expect sets to be the most common kind of collection in Hibernate applications. This is because the "set" semantics are most natural in the relational model.

However, in well-designed Hibernate domain models, most collections are in fact one-to-many associations with inverse="true". For these associations, the update is handled by the many- to-one end of the association, and so considerations of collection update performance simply do not apply.

21.5.3. Bags and lists are the most efficient inverse collections

There is a particular case, however, in which bags, and also lists, are much more performant than sets. For a collection with inverse="true", the standard bidirectional one-to-many relationship

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