A grid is a distributed system that includes non-interactive workloads involving massive data sets. Contrary to cluster solutions, grid solutions are more geographically dispersed, heterogeneous and are loosely coupled. Grid solutions are used for example in ‘super viral computers’, where many networked computers are loosely coupled to perform large tasks together.
GigaSpaces
GigaSpaces have developed XAP Elastic Caching edition. This in-memory data grid offers extreme performance, high scalability and fast data access. It is accessible with database data access API‘s such as SQL, JDBC and JPA. It supports SQL like queries, interoperability and it supports multiple languages such as Java, .NET, REST and documents. It is easy to integrate and comes with a monitoring management tool.
Galaxy
Galaxy is another in-memory data grid that offers high-performance for distributed applications. Galaxy moves data between nodes using a cache-coherence protocol, instead of sharding data. Galaxy is particularly fit for applications that have anticipated data patterns. It is built to be used as a low-level platform for distributed data structures.
