edu.cmu.tetrad.util.TetradSerializable Maven / Gradle / Ivy
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// For information as to what this class does, see the Javadoc, below. //
// Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, //
// 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2022 by Peter Spirtes, Richard //
// Scheines, Joseph Ramsey, and Clark Glymour. //
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// This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify //
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// GNU General Public License for more details. //
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package edu.cmu.tetrad.util;
import java.io.Serializable;
/**
* Interface to tag a class that is part of the set of serializable classes
* in the Tetrad API. These classes must have all of their serialiable fields marked with @serial tags, and they may
* only have serializable fields that are primitive, TetradSerializable, arrays of some TetradSerializable type,
* Collection or Map classes, or String or Class fields. They must also have a static final long field called
* 'serialVerUID' set to 23L. Classes in this set may never change their class name or package path once published, and
* the type of any serializable member field may never be changed to an incompatible type. (For primitives, change the
* type at all constitutes an incompatible change.) If these conditions are all met, then Tetrad sessions saved out in
* one version will load in later versions of Tetrad. They may load with incorrect information if, for instance, the
* name of a field is changed or the interpretation of that field changes. So in general, when making a class
* TetradSerializable, please make sure that its member fields all have good names (that you won't want to change later)
* and all have clear interpretations (that you won't want to change later).> 0
If that all sounds like a pain,
* the payoff is that even very large Tetrad sessions will load quickly. This isn't currently true, from what I can
* tell, for any XML renderer/parser on the market. If a Tetrad session contains a dataset with 50 and 5000 cases, for
* instance, binary serialization will load it in well under a second, whereas XML parsers that I've checked don't come
* back in under 5 minutes.> 0
The test class that checks the above conditions are TestSerialization, which in
* turn uses methods in TetradSerializableUtils. More details can be find there.> 0
*
* See TestSerialization and TestSerializiableUtils.> 0
*
* @author josephramsey
*/
public interface TetradSerializable extends Serializable {
}