Caching big arrays

[Serge Papin]

Is there a ready-to-use solution for working with big arrays in Java so that only a part of the array is in memory and everything else is stored on disk?
Thanks.

[Stephen Huey]

I don't know of anything like that in the API...

[Rick O'Shay]

NIO has classes that do just that. It's a fundamental requirement for a serious server environment and was added in Java 1.4. NIO used to be done using native method interfaces and that's no longer required.

http://javaalmanac.com/egs/java.nio/CreateMemMap.html

[Serge Papin]

Originally posted by Rick O'Shay:
NIO has classes that do just that. It's a fundamental requirement for a serious server environment and was added in Java 1.4. NIO used to be done using native method interfaces and that's no longer required.

http://javaalmanac.com/egs/java.nio/CreateMemMap.html

Thanks Rick.
So do you suggest creating FileChannel and using position() and read()/write() methods to do the job? Wouldn't that be too expensive and slow?
I thought of much more sophisticated approach.

[Rick O'Shay]

Impossible to say without analyzing your requirements. The disk is slower but usually plenty fast depending on the application and the bits are dirt cheap. Actually, I think dirts a little more