I just installed the 2.8 release, and am testing the new Memory cache option. The first problem (confusion) I encountered relates to the admin GUI screens. I normally do not configure a default set of layer parameters, but do this on specific layers. When I looked at my first test layer, the Memory cache option was greyed out. I finally figured out I had to activate the layer default option on the 'Caching Defaults' screen, and set various (general memory cache) values there for this to work.
The first question/comment is - should these cache mode (File vs Memory) settings actually be under the Caching Defaults/layer default, or in a new section (Cache Store Parameters) on this page (always available). The same is also true for the memory cache stats that are also there.
The next question is if there will be a way to select the cache store type used on a per layer basis (File for some, memory for others)? Having a per layer selection would be very advantageous - using file based for 'static' layers, and memory of 'dynamic' (frequently changing) layers.
And on an unrelated note, it would help to expand the new JAI-Ext settings docs to mention when you should 'activate' the options. In particular, my platform does not have native JAI available, so my guess is I should activate all of these. Perhaps this should be the default if Native JAI is not detected.
Thanks, Tom
FWIW - not a lot of other testing yes, but so far seems good. Environment is Win2012R2, Tomcat 8, Java 7, geoS WAR deploy