[TINKERPOP-356] Restrict vertex and edge IDs to a single type per Graph

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Blocker
• Resolution: Done
• Fix Version/s: 3.0.0-incubating
• Component/s: structure, tinkergraph
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Bob Briody
• Created: 14/Nov/14 13:06
• Updated: 24/Mar/15 19:00
• Resolved: 24/Mar/15 19:00

Description

Handling IDs generically via TinkerPop is difficult for 2 reasons:

• There is no way to retrieve the Id types (1 for vertex, 1 for edge) of the underlying graph.
• TinkerGraph allows mixed types, meaning one vertex's Id might be a Long and another a String.

This is especially annoying when going to/from JSON, as the type of every single Id must be serialized to ensure that it can be properly recreated later.

I believe all the implementations except TinkerGraph restrict Ids to a single type per graph. I see this flexibility as more of a nuisance than a feature - at least at the moment

Here is my request:

• Graphs should restrict IDs to a single type. (This would only be a modification to TinkerGraph, I think.)
• Graph should provide a getter for retrieving the type of it's Ids.

TinkerGraph would obviously still need to support any type as an Id, but I think this could be handled lazily by setting the Id type when the first vertex and edge is created.