Design Guidelines

Use the following guidelines when employing an identity map:

If using a Java 2-compatible Virtual Machine (VM), objects with a long lifespan, and object identity are important, use a SoftCacheWeakIdentityMap or HardCacheWeakIdentityMap policy.
If using a Java 2-compatible VM, and object identity is important but caching is not, use a WeakIdentityMap policy.
If an object has a long lifespan or requires frequent access, or is important, use a FullIdentityMap policy.
If an object has a short lifespan or requires frequent access, and identity is not important, use a CacheIdentityMap policy.
If objects are discarded immediately after being read from the database, such as in a batch operation, use a NoIdentityMap policy.
Note: The NoIdentityMap does not preserve object identity.