gremlin-core/src/main/java/org/apache/tinkerpop/gremlin/process/traversal/step/SideEffectCapable.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.tinkerpop.gremlin.process.traversal.step;

/**
 * A {@code SideEffectCapable} step stores a side-effect data structure accessible by a side-effect key.
 * All SideEffectCapable steps are {@link Generating} in that they may require a post-processing function once
 * the side-effect data has been aggregated.
 *
 * @author Marko A. Rodriguez (http://markorodriguez.com)
 */
public interface SideEffectCapable<S, E> extends Generating<S, E> {

    /**
     * The side-effect key of the step.
     *
     * @return the side-effect key
     */
    public String getSideEffectKey();

}