Message Title

I do have an initial design proposal to help (I think) clarify these points you make.

First, I think we should split the concept of QueryRegion from Region. Basically we will make the distinction between QueryRegion and CacheableRegion (entity, ...) and expose that on RegionFactory by adding a new RegionFactory#createQueryRegion.

QueryRegion and however we decide to expose update-timestamps are each accessed directly (not protected by "access" contract).

interface RegionFactory {
    ...
    CacheableRegion buildCacheableRegion(String regionName, CacheableRegionNameMapping regionNameMapping, RegionBuildingContext buildingContext);
    QueryResultsRegion buildQueryResultsRegion(String regionName, RegionBuildingContext buildingContext);

    UpdateTimestampsRegion buildUpdateTimestampsRegion()
}

interface CacheableRegion {
	EntityStorageAccess getEntityStorageAccess(NavigableRole rootEntityRole) throws CacheException;
	NaturalIdStorageAccess getNaturalIdStorageAccess(NavigableRole rootEntityRole) throws CacheException;
	CollectionStorageAccess getCollectionStorageAccess(NavigableRole collectionRole) throws CacheException;
}

interface QueryResultsRegion extends DirectAccessRegion {
}

interface UpdateTimestampsRegion extends DirectAccessRegion {
}

interface DirectAccessRegion {
    Object get(SharedSessionContractImplementor session, Object key) throws CacheException;
    void put(SharedSessionContractImplementor session, Object key, Object value) throws CacheException;
}