Bug 82240 [Viewers] Need a content provider for tables that gets elements lazily
Currently all of our viewers assume that all of the elements are avialble. In the case of a virtual table we also want to be able to load elements as they become visible rather than all at once (common issue for databases). Here are some of the issues 1) Need to setItemCount on the table from the content provider 2) Need a getElements(start,finish) method on the content provider 3) Need to decide how to handle staleness. If there are a million items and the viewer just sits there scrolled to the bottom that is a million TableItems and a million Objects represented. How do we manage memory for this?
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/viewers/StructuredViewer.java
/**
	 * Adds the element item pair to the element map.
	 * <p>
	 * This method is internal to the framework; subclassers should not call
	 * this method.
	 * </p>
	 * 
	 * @param element
	 *            the element
	 * @param item
	 *            the corresponding widget
	 */
	protected void mapElement(Object element, Widget item) {
		if (elementMap != null)
			elementMap.put(element, item);
	}
	/**
	 * Determines whether a change to the given property of the given element
	 * would require refiltering and/or resorting.
	 * <p>
	 * This method is internal to the framework; subclassers should not call
	 * this method.
	 * </p>
	 * 
	 * @param element
	 *            the element
	 * @param property
	 *            the property
	 * @return <code>true</code> if refiltering is required, and
	 *         <code>false</code> otherwise