Do we have any performance analysis of the impact of these long keys, or do we just intuitively think it's a big deal? For example, what happens when GZIP compression is used to deliver both the initial page and partial responses? We should have a real justification before making things too complex.
We haven't yet addressed Arjuna's assertion that the current design doesn't seem to cover all the usecases, specifically regarding the cache stability over multiple postbacks, when previously observed keys have been cached at the client. I'm -1 on a special flag with pseudo-strict behavior in certain cases. Suppose we took the simplest design, where CollectionModel returns Object, doesn't need to worry about Strings at all, and a default conversion is applied to encode and decode these keys as (probably long) Strings during RenderResponse and ApplyRequestValues. Can someone enumerate the actual issues with that approach that we are trying to address with the current design? tc, -john. On 5/9/06, Adam Winer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Arjuna, +1 for supporting collection models that can return efficient strings. But I'm currently -1 on adding new methods to CollectionModel, and -1 on removing the key cache altogether. It's really handy to support collection models that return potentially long keys, especially once you start stamping out a lot of rows, since you only store the really long key once. Any thoughts about adding a flag to turn the key cache on and off? And when the key cache is off, the model had better return Strings or else...? -- Adam On 5/9/06, Arjuna Wijeyekoon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Devs, > > In order to identify which row was updated or clicked on (by the user in the > browser) we need a string row identifier. RowKeys in the framework are > Objects (UIXCollection.getRowKey() returns Object). So we need a way to go > from Object to String and back. > > In the current UIXCollection class we maintain a cache between RowKeys and > string tokens. > During the encode phase, any new RowKey (that was not encountered before) is > assigned a new string token (which is just a counter). Then during the > subsequent decode phase each submitted string token is used to lookup the > corresponding RowKey so that updates are certain to happen to the correct > row. > > In order to prevent this cache from growing indefinitely, we clear the cache > at the start of each encode phase. > > This approach has the following problems: > > - During a ppr request, some string tokens might still be "active" on > the browser. However, we clear the token cache at the start of the encode > phase, so on the next submit those old tokens could conflict and cause > errors or updates to the wrong rows. > - Increases the size of the component-state-saving tree. > - Sometimes the same row is displayed by different components, and > each component has its own cache which is wasteful. > - The string token has no "meaning" so it makes things harder to debug > on the client-side. > > Possible solution > So if we get out of the business of caching the RowKey-string map, then we > don't have to worry about being consistent with the state on the > client-side. I think we should put the burden of producing a String rowkey > on the CollectionModel implementer. The CollectionModel can have two new > methods: > public String getRowKeyAsString(Object rowkey); > public Object getRowKeyFromString(String rowkey); > > The default implementation of CollectionModel can use standard java > serializing (followed by base 64 uuencode) to go between Object and String > (in the event that the RowKey is not already a String). > > And the corresponding methods on UIXCollection: > getCurrencyString() > setCurrencyString(String) > will also change to > getRowKeyString() > setRowKeyString(String) > > Optimization for TreeModel > > TreeModel will typically create long RowKey Strings, eg: > /foo/bar > /foo/bar/baz > /foo/bar/boo > > However, if the component renderer detects that the rowkey String of a child > starts with the rowkey String of the parent rowkey, then the renderer can > use this to only write the parent's rowkey string (once), and write only the > discriminating parts of each child key, eg: > /foo/bar > ./baz > ./boo > > > thoughts? Can I start on this implementation? > --arjuna > >
-- http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=10044 Author: Pro JSF and Ajax: Building Rich Internet Components, Apress
