package org.infinispan.atomic;
/**
* This interface allows the extraction of {@link Delta}s.
* <br/>
* Implementations would be closely coupled to a corresponding {@link Delta} implementation, since {@link
* Delta#merge(DeltaAware)} would need to know how to recreate this instance of DeltaAware if needed.
* <br/>
* Implementations of DeltaAware automatically gain the ability to perform fine-grained replication in Infinispan,
* since Infinispan's data container is able to detect these types and only serialize and transport Deltas around
* the network rather than the entire, serialized object.
* <br />
* Using DeltaAware makes sense if your custom object is large in size and often only sees small portions of the
* object being updated in a transaction. Implementations would need to be able to track these changes during the
* course of a transaction though, to be able to produce a {@link Delta} instance, so this too is a consideration
* for implementations.
* <br />
*
* @author Manik Surtani
* @see Delta
* @since 4.0
*/
public interface DeltaAware {
/**
* Extracts changes made to implementations, in an efficient format that can easily and cheaply be serialized and
* deserialized. This method will only be called once for each changeset as it is assumed that any implementation's
* internal changelog is wiped and reset after generating and submitting the delta to the caller.
*
* @return an instance of Delta
*/
Delta delta();
/**
* Indicate that all deltas collected to date has been extracted (via a call to {@link #delta()}) and can be
* discarded. Often used as an optimization if the delta isn't really needed, but the cleaning and resetting of
* internal state is desirable.
*/
void commit();
}