public Association createAssociation(AssociationKey key, AssociationContext associationContext) {
//TODO we don't verify that it does not yet exist assuming that this ahs been done before by the calling code
//should we improve?
Cache<AssociationKey, Map<RowKey, Map<String, Object>>> cache = provider.getCache( ASSOCIATION_STORE );
Map<RowKey, Map<String, Object>> atomicMap = AtomicMapLookup.getFineGrainedAtomicMap( cache, key, true );
return new Association( new MapAssociationSnapshot( atomicMap ) );
}