org.eobjects.analyzer.data.InputColumn Maven / Gradle / Ivy
/**
* eobjects.org AnalyzerBeans
* Copyright (C) 2010 eobjects.org
*
* This copyrighted material is made available to anyone wishing to use, modify,
* copy, or redistribute it subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU
* Lesser General Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
* or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License
* for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
* along with this distribution; if not, write to:
* Free Software Foundation, Inc.
* 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
* Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
*/
package org.eobjects.analyzer.data;
import java.io.Serializable;
import org.apache.metamodel.schema.Column;
import org.apache.metamodel.util.HasName;
/**
* Represents a column that is used to retrieve values from a row of data. A
* column can be either physical (based directly on a database column) or
* virtual if the values yielded by this column are have been transformed (eg.
* tokenized, sampled etc.)
*
* @param
* the data type of the column
*/
public interface InputColumn extends HasName, Comparable>, Serializable {
/**
* @return the name of this column
*/
@Override
public String getName();
/**
* @return true if this InputColumn is based on a physical column that can
* be natively queried.
*/
public boolean isPhysicalColumn();
/**
* @return true if this InputColumn is virtual (ie. the opposite of
* physical).
*/
public boolean isVirtualColumn();
/**
* @return the underlying physical column.
* @throws IllegalStateException
* if isPhysicalColumn() is false
*/
public Column getPhysicalColumn() throws IllegalStateException;
/**
* The Data type stored in this column represented as a Java type. Notice
* that for most purposes you should ud getDataTypeFamily as it is limited
* to the actual supported families of data types (eg. File is not a
* supported data type, but Integer, Float, String etc. are).
*
* @return the data type of this column.
*/
public Class getDataType();
}