| /* |
| * 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.uima.cas; |
| |
| /** |
| * The interface that describes features in the type system. |
| * |
| * <p> |
| * <a name="names">Feature short or base names</a> are <a href="./Type.html#identifiers"> type |
| * system identifiers</a>. The (fully) qualified name of a feature is the <a |
| * href="./Type.html#names">name</a> of the type it is defined on, followed by a colon, followed by |
| * the its short name. For example, the qualified name of the Annotation begin feature is |
| * <code>uima.tcas.Annotation:begin</code>. |
| * |
| * |
| */ |
| public interface Feature extends Comparable { |
| |
| /** |
| * Get the domain type for this feature. |
| * |
| * @return The domain type. This can not be <code>null</code>. |
| */ |
| Type getDomain(); |
| |
| /** |
| * Get the range type for this feature. |
| * |
| * @return The range type. This can not be <code>null</code>. |
| */ |
| Type getRange(); |
| |
| /** |
| * Get the <a href="#names">qualified name</a> for this feature. |
| * |
| * @return The name. |
| */ |
| String getName(); |
| |
| /** |
| * Get the <a href="#names">unqualified, short name</a> of this feature. |
| * |
| * @return The short name. |
| */ |
| String getShortName(); |
| |
| /** |
| * Checks if there can be multiple references to values of this feature. This is only |
| * meaningful for array-valued or list-values features. |
| * <p> |
| * If this is false it indicates that this feature has exclusive ownership of the |
| * array or list, so changes to the array or list are localized. If this is true it indicates |
| * that the array or list may be shared, so changes to it may affect other objects in the CAS. |
| * |
| * @return <code>true</code> iff the value type of this feature is an array or list and has been |
| * declared to allow multiple references. |
| */ |
| boolean isMultipleReferencesAllowed(); |
| |
| } |