I'm looking to extend the JGroups ReplicatedHashMap demo with additional functionality - the ability to support named submaps to be replicated across different instances within the same cluster.
The basic idea is that not all clients need to have a local copy of the entire hashmap, but might need to request additional chunks of the hashmap on demand. Each client would start out with a relatively small base set of data, say, the state associated with the state id "base_data". As they required more specialized data, they would perform a partial state transfer requesting the exact data they required; the state associated with state id "specialized_data_1". This creates a kind of localized caching service where updates to the cache propogate to appropriate clients within the cluster.
Is this an appropriate use of Partial State Transfer with JGroups? Is there a better way to do this? Am I completely misunderstanding partial state transfer? Since JGroups 3.x doesn't support partial state transfer, how could this be implemented there? I haven't found very much documentation on partial state transfer, beyond this small section in the documentation (scroll/search for "3.6.15. Partial state transfer"), so I'd appreciate any other good references you might recommend.
Thanks