monitoring mysql for changes

Question

I have a Java app using a MySQL database through hibernate. The database is really used as persistence layer: The database is read at the initial load of the program, and

Answer 1

Instead of caching the database contents within the memory space of the Java app, you could use an external cache like memcached or Ehcache. When either process updates (or reads) from the database, have it update memcached as well.

This way whenever either process updates the DB, its updates will be in the cache that the other process reads from.