[infinispan-dev] [ISPN-78] Finalising the API

[Olaf Bergner]

After finishing the first iteration of implementing ISPN-961 - Spring 
Integration - I would like to turn my attention back to ISPN-78 - Large 
Object Support. Specifically, I would like to finalise the API before 
concentrating on the hard stuff, namely locking and transaction support.

These are the changes I currently envision:

1. Introduce a dedicated StreamingCache whereas now we have a 
StreamingHandler a user obtains via Cache.getStreamingHandler(). A 
StreamingCache would be a special kind of cache completely separate from 
org.infinispan.Cache. Users would obtain StreamingCache instances from a 
CacheManager.

Rationale: Users will IMHO most likely never mix and match "regular" as 
well as large objects within a single cache. It is my experience that 
(well-behaved) applications are acutely aware of the special treatment 
large objects warrant. I therefore suspect that users will reserve a 
dedicated cache for large objects anyway. Therefore it doesn't make 
sense for such a cache to expose an API for "regular" objects.
Further, we might be able to provide sensible default settings for such 
large object caches whereas now "regular" and large object caches share 
the same default settings (since INFINISPAN cannot tell the difference).

2. Rename API methods:

     void writeToKey(K key, InputStream largeObject) -> void 
storeLargeObject(K key, InputStream largeObject)
     OutputStream writeToKey(K key)                         -> 
OutputStream newLargeObject(K key)
     InputStream readFromKey(K key)                         -> 
InputStream getLargeObject(K key)
     boolean removeKey(K key)                                   -> 
boolean removeLargeObject(K key)

Rationale: The API should center around large objects, not their keys 
and method names should reflect this.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Olaf