Metadata support: Extensions handling

[Brent Putman]

On 8/13/13 5:23 AM, Ian Young wrote:
>
> This is more or less how I recall the discussion.  Definitely not copying, but reference; and probably processed information rather than XMLObjects although if you're not copying I think that's an independent axis.

Ok, this is pretty much my recollection also, at least for the main
stuff we care about (e.g. KeyAuthority)



>
> I say context here deliberately because it does seem reasonable for generality for that to be the sort of class-indexed map style of object we're using elsewhere in the IdP.

That was certainly still my plan.  I was just looking at the
ClassToInstanceMultiMap in aggregator-pipeline.  We may be able to use
as-is and I'll probably promote that, or a variant of it, up to
java-support.  The only thing about that impl is that it is append-only,
other than a clear() op.  Implementing a remove() op etc might be tricky
with all the class and interface indexing going on though, but I may
give it a shot.

The main headache there is deciding what to call the damn collection
thingy.  "annotations" and "metadata" are what come to mind, but of
course both those terms are overloaded in our world. At the moment I'm
considering using "object metadata", so XMLObjects will get a new
getObjectMetadata().  Unless someone has a better name.