Any ideas to implement list component with buffered "inline edit" and fully searchable?

Question

I am handed a task to implement a (web) list component (in Java, but inspirations may come from programmers using other platform) that would render as a table with following requirements:

1. Database paging. The list could contain several thousands of rows. At one time, the component could only hold a subset of the list in memory.
2. Buffered "inline edit". (I'm not even sure this is the right term.) User may change data on any row, but the change should not be flushed/committed to the database just yet, not until the user hit "save" button.
3. User may sort the table from any column, or create filters.

I'm thinking a solution that goes like this:

1. I will implement a 'buffer' store that is queryable and cluster proof. Something like db4o (http://www.db4o.com/). I'm not sure whether choosing this particular component is wise.., but you get the idea.
2. on flow start (flow==between initial page load and 'save' button clicked) , the whole (unfiltered) list is loaded into the store. The list component will query against this temporary store.
3. Any changes to the data during this flow will be made against object in the store.
4. when user click 'save', all dirty data in the store will be comitted back to the relational database.

What do you think of this solution?

Is there a particular component/technology I should try for the temporary store?

Answer 1

We have similar functionality implemented in our project, albeit in Javascript using ExtJS.

You can find a demo here