By default, before inserting a new node into the tree or removing an existing node from the tree, JBoss Cache will only attempt to acquire a read lock on the new node's parent node. This approach does not treat child nodes as an integral part of a parent node's state. This approach allows greater concurrency if nodes are frequently added or removed, but at a cost of lesser correctness. For use cases where greater correctness is necessary, JBoss Cache provides a configuration option LockParentForChildInsertRemove . If this is set to true , insertions and removals of child nodes require the acquisition of a write lock on the parent node.

In addition to the above, in version 2.1.0 and above, JBoss Cache offers the ability to override this configuration on a per-node basis. See Node.setLockForChildInsertRemove() and it's corresponding javadocs for details.