Lazy child nodes iteration feature is accessible via the org.exoplatform.services.jcr.core.ExtendedNode extended interface, the inheritor of javax.jcr.Node. It provides a new single method shown below:

   /**

    * Returns a NodeIterator over all child Nodes of this Node. Does not include properties 

    * of this Node. If this node has no child nodes, then an empty iterator is returned.

    * 

    * @return A NodeIterator over all child Nodes of this <code>Node</code>.

    * @throws RepositoryException If an error occurs.

    */

   public NodeIterator getNodesLazily() throws RepositoryException;

From the view of end-user or client application, getNodesLazily() works similar to JCR specified getNodes() returning NodeIterator. "Lazy" iterator supports the same set of features as an ordinary NodeIterator, including skip() and excluding remove() features. "Lazy" implementation performs reading from DB by pages. Each time when it has no more elements stored in memory, it reads the next set of items from persistent layer. This set is called "page". The getNodesLazily feature fully supports session and transaction changes log, so it is a functionally-full analogue of specified getNodes() operation. Therefore, when having a deal with huge list of child nodes, getNodes() can be simply and safely substituted with getNodesLazily().

JCR gives an experimental opportunity to replace all getNodes() invocations with getNodesLazily() calls. It handles a boolean system property named "org.exoplatform.jcr.forceUserGetNodesLazily" that internally replaces one call with another, without any code changes. But be sure using it only for development purposes. This feature can be used with the top level products using eXo JCR to perform a quick compatibility and performance tests without changing any code. This is not recommended to be used as a production solution.