[JCR-1508] Setting a new property value causes a read of the previous property value

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 1.4
• Component/s: jackrabbit-jcr2spi, jackrabbit-spi
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: David Rauschenbach
• Created: 30/Mar/08 23:20
• Updated: 22/Oct/08 16:04

Description

When using JCR2SPI with a custom SPI, getProperty is called when one attempts to set a new property value with disregard to the previous value. The current JCR2SPI implementation causes a getPropertyInfo, which requests the old value from the back-end. This is fundamentally unsound, and kills performance.

An SPI has no choice but to guard against this by returning a PropertyInfo proxy that performs lazy-loading of the value. The problem is that if an error occurs when dereferencing the value, and when performing the lazy-load, JCR2SPI is ill-suited to hande an unchecked exception at such a time. Besides, it is a "hack upon a hack", because JCR2SPI could do this work itself, by making proper use of the SPI functions for requesting property type information.