No, I do not need compatibility mode but I do need something technically similar, but with a different purpose. Namely, the binary values need to be automatically converted (wrapped actually) to an annotated object so HSearch can do the magic. We need to annotate and provide a custom FieldBridge to index the binary value.

That was about the value.

The key needs similar wrapping to be able to annotate it with a Transformer so it can be stringified, again for HSearch.

Now I have second thoughts about the wrapping of the key and I'm planning to remove this and modify KeyTransformationHandler to provide out of the box handling for byte[] so we do not need a custom Transfomer. After discussing this on #infinispan with @maniksurtani we concluded the KeyTransformationHandler is the way to go.

But the wrapping of the value is still needed. Will ask this on devlist to see what's the most sane way of doing it.