Joining Multiple Coherence Clusters

"I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago."

"Nyarlathotep" - H.P. Lovecraft

At my previous job I was given the following problem to consider: is it possible for a Java application (with just a single JVM) to connect to more than one Coherence cluster? In this context, the word "connect" means that the application actually joins the clusters in question, rather than simply works through a proxy such as provided by Coherence*Extend. I was able to determine that the answer was "yes", however the solution was not as straightforward as one might think. It's not possible to just load two Coherence instances into the JVM by calling a constructor with the necessary parameters, as Coherence makes extensive use of system properties and default configuration files in lieu of defining constructors for a client to call. In addition Coherence uses the Singleton pattern in conjuction with several key classes. That said, there is a solution and that's what this post is all about.