Depending on the application needs, Universal Cache can be deployed as a read-only cache or as a read-write cache.

When configured as a read-only cache, the data is owned by the backend database. This ownership means that the data stored in the cache cannot be modified by the application. In read-only configuration, applications can modify the data directly in the backend database and changes can be synchronized to the cache, transaction by transaction, automatically or on-demand. This configuration is ideal for applications that require fast access to data that changes occasionally, such as price lists, or reference or lookup data.

There are two deployment options for read-write cache, depending on the ownership of data.

When configured as a read-write cache where the data is owned by the cache, applications can read, add, modify, or delete data in the cache, but not in the backend database. Changes are propagated from the cache to the backend database, transaction by transaction, automatically, or on-demand. This configuration is useful for applications that have stringent service level agreements that demand short response times for a variety of data intensive operations.

When configured as a read-write cache where the data ownership is shared, applications can update the same data in both the cache and in the backend database at the same time. In this case, changes to the data can be propagated automatically in both directions. Conflicts are detected and resolved by using predefined conflict resolution methods. This type of cache type is useful when applications need to update the data in the backend database while the data is also cached for read-write access.