samoa-api/src/main/java/org/apache/samoa/moa/tasks/Task.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.samoa.moa.tasks;

import org.apache.samoa.moa.MOAObject;
import org.apache.samoa.moa.core.ObjectRepository;

/**
 * Interface representing a task.
 * 
 * @author Richard Kirkby (rkirkby@cs.waikato.ac.nz)
 * @version $Revision: 7 $
 */
public interface Task extends MOAObject {

  /**
   * Gets the result type of this task. Tasks can return LearningCurve, LearningEvaluation, Classifier, String,
   * Instances..
   * 
   * @return a class object of the result of this task
   */
  public Class<?> getTaskResultType();

  /**
   * This method performs this task, when TaskMonitor and ObjectRepository are no needed.
   * 
   * @return an object with the result of this task
   */
  public Object doTask();

  /**
   * This method performs this task. <code>AbstractTask</code> implements this method so all its extensions only need to
   * implement <code>doTaskImpl</code>
   * 
   * @param monitor
   *          the TaskMonitor to use
   * @param repository
   *          the ObjectRepository to use
   * @return an object with the result of this task
   */
  public Object doTask(TaskMonitor monitor, ObjectRepository repository);
}