The ProtobufMetadataManager is configured internally using compat mode plus the CompatibilityProtostreamMarshaller as a marshaller. This requires that HR clients use the protostream marshaller to register .proto files, since otherwise the server cannot unmarshall it.

The ProtobufMetadataManager cache should rely instead on the MediaType sent by the HR client and convert the incoming content to java object (String) on the fly, as long as the server supports conversion between the content produced by marshaller and java object.

Apart from that, there are multiple places in the code that registers/instantiates/configures objects based on the compat mode marshaller, and assume all content will be unmarshalled by this marshaller. It should instead rely on the MediaType information sent by the HR client and do the conversion on the fly, this would allow indexing and querying in multiple formats as long as the storage format is supported and the conversion between the input/storage is supported by the server.