Actually, I was thinking of something simpler... Somthing like a special case where one could supply binary data directly into a stored field. Something like:
public class Field {
public static Field Binary(String name, byte[] value);
public boolean isBinary();
public byte[] binaryValue();
}
This would automatically become a stored field. Lucene wouldn't need to know what the data means - just carry it around. The binaryValue() can return null unless isBinary() is true, in which case you'd get the data back and stringValue() would return null instead.
This would be a start. If we want to provide special handling for ints, floats, and so on, we provide a BinaryField class, a la DateField.
Sounds like a good plan. String-values remain as fast as they are, and binary values are no slower. We can easily layer compression, etc. on top of this.
Are you volunteering?
Doug
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