1 /**
2 * Copyright 2005-2011 The Kuali Foundation
3 *
4 * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
5 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
6 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
7 *
8 * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php
9 *
10 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
11 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
12 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
13 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
14 * limitations under the License.
15 */
16 package org.kuali.rice.krad.datadictionary.validation.constraint;
17
18 import java.io.Serializable;
19
20
21 /**
22 * This is the marker interface for constraints. Constraints are a central concept in the Rice data dictionary validation, and are the
23 * primary mechanism by which the validation of an object or one of its attributes takes place. For example, by imposing a length constraint
24 * on an attribute of a business object, it's possible to indicate that only values shorter (or longer) than a specific number of characters
25 * are valid for that attribute.
26 *
27 * Any interface that extends Constraint is by definition a constraint, and may have one of the following defined:
28 *
29 * - A sub-interface for {@see Constrainable} that advises on how a constraint maps to data dictionary metadata
30 * - A {@see ConstraintProvider} that looks up constraints for a specific constrainable definition
31 * - A {@see ConstraintProcessor} that processes the constraint against some object value to determine if it is valid
32 *
33 * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)
34 * @since 1.1
35 */
36 public interface Constraint extends Serializable {
37
38 // Empty - since this is a marker interface, all of the interesting stuff is in interfaces or classes that extend this interface
39
40 }