[SIS-360] Direct access to feature property array

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 0.7
• Component/s: Features
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Martin Desruisseaux
• Created: 31/May/17 10:05
• Updated: 31/May/17 10:05

Description

Some DataStore implementation creates a large amount of simple Feature instances. By "simple", we mean that all their properties have a 1:1 cardinality (i.e. must appear exactly once). The properties of those Feature can be stored in a plain array. This is indeed what the org.apache.sis.feature.DenseFeature package-private implementation does (we avoid exposing those implementation details in public API).

In the particular case where the Feature properties are stored in such array, it would be more efficient to access them by index instead than by name. We would do that only for a few performance-critical codes, and not in public API for avoiding complexity.

Possible approaches:

• Create a SimpleFeature interface in org.apache.sis.internal.feature package. That interface could have a getPropertyValue(int) method.