Details
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Improvement
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Status: Closed
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Major
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Resolution: Fixed
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JDO 2 final (2.0)
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None
Description
Several suggestions relating to evolving the API in support of Java5 features:
11.6, "Optional Feature Support":
The current draft specifies the signature
Collection supportedOptions();
then continues to read
"This method returns a Collection of String [...]"
This suggests that the signature should be
Collection<String> supportedOptions();
14.6.1, "Query Execution"
I suggest we eliminate
Object execute(Object p1);
Object execute(Object p1, Object p2);
Object execute(Object p1, Object p2, Object p3);
and deprecate
Object executeWithArray(Object[] parameters);
in favor of a newly added
Object execute(Object... parameters);
This new method would seamlessly support any existing calls to the three eliminated methods, and is a proper replacement for executeWithArray().
This would would leave us with three (non-deprecated) execution methods off the Query interface:
Object execute();
Object execute(Object... parameters);
Object executeWithMap(Map parameters);
A slightly more radical approach to this evolution would have us also eliminate
Object execute();
because the new varargs method can by definition support calls without arguments,
and deprecate
Object executeWithMap(Map params);
in favor of a new
Object execute(Map params);
because Java can disambiguate between calls to execute(Object... params) and execute(Map params) just fine. This is predecated by the assumption that it would never be valid to pass a Map instance as a first-class query parameter. That might be a faulty assumption, it might also just be confusing.
If all these changes were made, we'd be left with an execution API consisting of just two methods:
Object execute(Object... params);
Object execute(Map params);
This is, I believe, technically favorable and cleaner, but technical considerations are not the only valid ones. Leaving the no-arg execute() might be friendly to folks that don't understand varargs, etc.
14.8, "Deletion by Query":
The rationale used above for paring down Query's execute methods could also be applied to Query's deletePersistentAll methods. It would be legal and Java5-ish to eliminate the no-arg deletePersistentAll method and reduce the API down to:
long deletePersistentAll(Object... params);
long deletePersistentAll(Map params);
...
There's a number of other places in the spec changes like the ones mentioned here could be made, but I might be getting ahead of myself I'll await comments before touching on anything else.