I am new to Ehcache and would like to use Ehcache and have several simple questions. Can I use hierarchical key/value where value is also an associate array with list of key value pairs? Can I use CacheManager only without Cache server to store key/value data? Thanks in advance.
The Element constructor takes a java.lang.Object as key, and a java.lang.Object as value - so of course you can put in a Map or something like that as the value.
Yes, you can deploy Ehcache unclustered or distributed with a Terracotta server, if I understood your latter question correctly. See http://www.terracotta.org/ehcache/