Re: [infinispan-dev] Multi get API

I am nearing completion of the new multi get command [1], allowing for more efficient retrieval of multiple keys at the same time. Thanks again to Radim for a lot of the initial work. In doing so though I want to make sure I get feedback on how we want the API to actually look, since this is much more difficult to change down the line. There are a few things in particular I wanted to discuss. 1. The actual name of the method. The main suggestions I have seen are getAll or getMany. I do like the naming of the former, however it seems a bit misleading (remember API is getAll(Set) since we are really getting a subset. So I am thinking the possibilities at this point are getAllOf, getAllFor or getMany. I am leaning maybe towards the last one (getMany). I am open to any suggestions though.

2. What should the return value be for this method. Currently this returns a Map<K, V> which makes sense when we retain these values in the local transactional context and is pretty nice and clean for end users. The other idea is to use a streaming API possibly returning an Iterable<CacheEntry<K, V>>. The streaming return value doesn't seem as intuitive to me, but opens us up for more efficient usage especially when there may be a lot of keys passed in (also results can be processed concurrently while retrieval is still occurring). I would lean towards returning the Map<K, V> value, however the next point could change that.

3. Where this method should live. Right now this method is on the BasicCache interface which is a parent of both Cache (embedded) and RemoteCache (remote). Unfortunately for remote clients to be as efficient as possible we really need a Streaming API so that we don't have multiple copies of data in memory at multiple places at the same time. For that reason I suggest we use the streaminig API for both or have a different API for remote vs embedded.