by Horatiu Dan

In order to be able to leverage various capabilities of the Java Streams, one shall first understand two general concepts – the stream and the stream pipeline. A Stream in Java is a sequential flow of data. A stream pipeline on the other hand, represents a series of steps applied to data, series that ultimately produce a result.

My family and I recently visited the Legoland Resort in Germany – a great place by the way – and there, among other attractions, we had the chance to observe in detail a sample of the brick building process. Briefly, everything starts from the granular plastic that is melted, modeled accordingly, assembled, painted, stenciled if needed and packed up in bags and boxes. All the steps are part of an assembly factory pipeline.

What is worth mentioning is the fact that the next step cannot be done until the previous one has completed and also that the number of steps is finite. Moreover, at e...