Well, on the other hand, a cache is only of use if the requests are not totally random. Otherwise, you cache results that are never needed again. What Alex is describing sounds to me like a data index. I agree that this does not work for an unbounded set of properties. However, what might work is something like the index structures used in database technology. What about a Hashtable (or better -Map) with B+-Trees as values. So the property name is the key, which means, all properties will fit into one table and providing that the properties have a reasonable distribution, the lookup of a property is in constant time. Each value is a B+-Tree, which allows you to have very efficient lookup of the complicated range structures, for instance, in the version property. Would something like this make sense ?
Jan. ----------------------------------------------------------- ETH Zurich, MSc Jan S. Rellermeyer, Information and Communication Systems Research Group (IKS), Department of Computer Science, IFW B 47.1, Haldeneggsteig 4, CH8092 Zürich Tel +41 44 632 30 38, http://www.iks.inf.ethz.ch -----------------------------------------------------------
