[infinispan-dev] Why is loading from store needed before storing in cache store?

Hi, I'd like to list the reasons why we load data from the cache store, if not present in memory, when trying to modify a k/v. So far, the most powerful one I've found is when you're dealing with cold caches and you need to return previous value. You definitely need to load first to get previous value before modifying. Now, if this is the only situation, it could be optimised by checking whether unreliableReturnValues is on or not. This is somehow linked with the discussion wrt https://jira.jboss.org/browse/ISPN-693 and the previous email thread for http://lists.jboss.org/pipermail/infinispan-dev/2010-October/006436.html I can't think of any other situations right now, but it'd be interesting to know whether anyone knows other (Manik, Mircea?) Any information arising from this thread should be condensed into javadoc for loadIfNeeded method. Cheers, -- Galder Zamarreño Sr. Software Engineer Infinispan, JBoss Cache