Explain the lifecycle of a FreeMarker Template object?

A Template instance moves through a small number of well-defined stages, and understanding them explains why FreeMarker performs well under load.

1. Request: application code calls configuration.getTemplate(name, locale).
2. Cache lookup: the Configuration's internal template cache is checked using a key built from the name, locale, and encoding.
3. Cache hit (fresh): if a cached entry exists and is still within the configured freshness window, the existing compiled Template (AST) is returned immediately - no I/O, no re-parsing.
4. Cache miss or stale: the configured TemplateLoader is asked for the source; if it has changed (or was never loaded), FreeMarker parses the FTL text into an AST, wraps it in a new Template, and stores it back in the cache.
5. Processing: template.process(dataModel, writer) may be called any number of times, from any number of threads, against that same compiled Template - each call creates its own Environment, so calls do not interfere with each other.

Because the expensive step - parsing - only happens on a cache miss, and the resulting Template is immutable and thread-safe, one compiled template can safely serve a very high volume of concurrent process() calls.