With the latest release of GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) 6.0.2 we’ve refined the integration with Hibernate, the object/relational persistence and query service.
Now the Hibernate integration can be used in two ways; One is to use GigaSpaces as 2nd level distributed cache, replacing the default caching solution that comes with Hibernate. The second way is to run the GigaSpaces Data Grid and use Hibernate in the back-end to persist data into a database.

For example, a typical application that uses Hibernate would look like this:

So GigaSpaces can replace the default 2nd level cache to a distributed 2nd level cahce:

Using this Master-Local paradigm, this entire solution can be used freely with XAP – Community, the free community edition of GigaSpaces XAP.
As another option, as mentioned above, the GigaSpace-Hibernate integration can be used as a persistent data grid, as shown below:

All in all, it’s pretty cool stuff. You can read more about it and find a walkthrough and example of the implementation in our doc.