The PropertySet class

The real strength of the Property and Oid classes begins to appear with the PropertySet class. This is an Oid-to-Property mapping which therefore represents a tree structure. Because each property's object ID is an integer sequence a PropertySet can be fairly efficient to manage and transmit over a network. It has been inspired by SNMP.

Here is an abbreviated overview of PropertySet:

public class PropertySet implements Serializable
{
    /** Create a new, empty, PropertySet.
     */
    public PropertySet()

    /** Create a new PropertySet which is a copy of an existing one.
     */
    public PropertySet(PropertySet p)

    /** Returned Oids have prefix of the given pattern.
     */
    public Oid[] getKeys(Oid pattern) 

    /** Returned oids match pattern exactly.
     */
    public Oid[] getMatchingKeys(Oid pattern)

    /** Number of mappings.
     */
    public int getSize()
        
    /** Set or remove a property.
     * @param value   If null then entry is removed from this PropertySet.
     */
    public void setProperty(Oid key, Property value)

    /** Get the property at the given key. 
     *  @return null if property not found.
     */
    public Property getProperty(Oid key)

    /** Get all the keys in this set.
     */    
    public Oid[] getKeys()

    // ...Some omissions
}