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Hi all,<br>
<br>
as some probably know protobuf was chosen as the serialization
format for the remote query [1]. Them main reason for choosing it
was that is <i>simple</i>, time tested, has good support for schema
evolution, is nearly ubiquitous (some people say google uses it :)),
has multiple language support and most importantly it mandates the
existence of a schema for our objects - the proto file. We need that
schema on the server side to be able to extract indexable fields
from those binary cache values and index them without the need to
unmarshall them into plain java domain objects.<br>
<br>
And I need to stress that the format was chosen, rather than the
actual API/library provided by Google [2]. While the protobuf wire
format is superb, Google's approach to create a library for
marshaling objects to/from a protobuf stream is heavily based on
code generation via the protoc tool. Both the marshalling code <i>and
the entities</i> to be marshaled (your beloved domain model) are
generated. This does not work well if you want to bring your own
domain classes to the party.<br>
<br>
So what we did is create a small set of support classes on top of
google's low level wire format classes to assist users in marshaling
their own domain model to the protobuf wire format without using
google's code generator. These attempts are hosted on a small github
project experiment [3] that will be moved to infinispan once we have
a conclusion. This project contains several modules demonstrating
the attempts. [4] explains the purpose of each module. So far, the
approach in module <i>stream-like</i> offers the best user
experience. I would name this plan A, which is going to be
implemented for infinispan 6.0. <br>
<br>
Plan A can also use the classes generated by google's protoc code
generator tool. So if somebody prefers to go old school it can still
work well. Also, the amount of new support code we added on top of
google's library is small, so I don't foresee any nightmare in
porting this to another language.<br>
<br>
I would like to get some feedback from anyone who has some time to
have a look at [3], specifically at the <i>stream-like</i> module.<br>
Stream-like is about 89.9% implemented. There are still some
unimplemented methods but do not mind them for the review. <br>
<br>
And finally, if anyone could suggest a better name for the
stream-like package? I can't think of any other option except <i>streamlike</i>
:) (which might be trade-marked) So any other options? If no options
then we'll just call it <i>marshaling</i>. I'll move this to the
ispn branch once I know the package name :)<br>
<br>
Have a nice weekend guys!<br>
<br>
--------------<br>
[1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://community.jboss.org/wiki/RemoteQueryDesignInInfinispan">https://community.jboss.org/wiki/RemoteQueryDesignInInfinispan</a><br>
[2] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/">https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/</a><br>
[3] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/anistor/protobuf-playground">https://github.com/anistor/protobuf-playground</a><br>
[4]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/anistor/protobuf-playground/blob/master/README.md">https://github.com/anistor/protobuf-playground/blob/master/README.md</a><br>
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