Well, I love Ember but unfortunately the caching model i neighter optimal nor well documentated! I already had thoughts about this.
Its is very tricky, since u cant always cache a query! Both, the list of items in the result and the data on the items may have changed since your last call! So it would be necessary to have a way to tell ember data that some query results should be cached! Then u may also need a way to tell ember data that a cached query is outdated! If we think further, we notice that the query should only return additional items, but the data on the existing ones remain the same, u may only want to sent the new items over the network! So maybe we need a way that the Server can sent only a list of ids, and then Ember data has to call a maybe required findMany, if some of the items dont exist yet or are outdated. Well, outdated, a good keyword! The other situation is much more likely: The list of items remains, but on some of them are the data not in sync with the server.
So, over all, we would need a seperated cache for lists of items, and a cache for items (which we already have). We would also require a way to tell ember what should be cached and what not! We also need a way to tell ember some cached date are outdated, for both, lists and items (or both). And finally we need a way to auto update the required data when needed.
This is at least complicated, and I would love to build it myself, but i dont have the required time at the moment or in near future to do it right!
And since this does not be important for the ember community, i guess we have to stay at jQuery or life with the limitations I guess.
Actually, its a reason for me to not use Ember Data at the moment but to load all data manually with jQuery.