core/src/main/java/org/apache/calcite/schema/TableMacro.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.calcite.schema;

import org.checkerframework.checker.nullness.qual.Nullable;

import java.util.List;

/**
 * Function that returns a {@link Table}.
 *
 * <p>As the name "macro" implies, this is invoked at "compile time", that is,
 * during query preparation. Compile-time expansion of table expressions allows
 * for some very powerful query-optimizations.</p>
 */
public interface TableMacro extends Function {
  /**
   * Applies arguments to yield a table.
   *
   * @param arguments Arguments
   * @return Table
   */
  TranslatableTable apply(List<? extends @Nullable Object> arguments);
}