RowanChrismtas - 10/03/05 - enforcing the String as Key, Value as type would be even easier if the methods were just a part of the API directly, imo.

EthanCerami - 10/5/05 - However, your proposed approach doesn't provide compile-time checks either. Here's an example method from CytoscapeData:

   1 public int putAttributeKeyValue (String identifier, String attribute, 
   2     String key, Object value);
   3 

The only way to enforce checking at compile time is to create a whole suite of methods, e.g.

   1 public int putAttributeKeyValue (String identifier, String attribute, 
   2     String key, String value);
   3 public int putAttributeKeyValue (String identifier, String attribute, 
   4     String key, Boolean value);
   5 public int putAttributeKeyValue (String identifier, String attribute, 
   6     String key, Integer value);
   7 public int putAttributeKeyValue (String identifier, String attribute, 
   8     String key, Double value);
   9 

And, I think we can agree that this will result in way too many methods.

EthanCerami - 10/4/05 - Subgroup (Nerius, Iliana, Ethan) agreed to go with single set of getters/setters for Lists and Maps, e.g. we vote to go with setAttributeList(List list), and setAttributeMap(Map map).