updateGeometricState vs updateWorldData

I'm a bit confused about the usage of updateGeometricState und updateWorldData.

By looking at the sourcecode I see that updateGeometricState is calling updateWorldData on the node it is called on and it calls updateWorldBound.

updatWorldData calls updateGeometricState.

So when do I use updateWorldData and when do I use updateGeometricState?

iirc updateWorldData does not update the children of a node, updateGeometricState does. Usually you'd call updateGeometricState (if any).

updateWorldData updates the children (checked it in the sourcecode) that's why I'm a bit puzzled.

These are good questions actually.  Some of this is remnants of Eberly terminology from the early days of jME.  Things grew a lot and changed from there.  Now we have updateWorldVectors (also poorly named I guess given our use of Quats) that does what the comments to updateWorldData say that method should do.  We probably need a little retooling here to make things more clear.