/*

  * Copyright 2011 The Kuali Foundation

  *

  * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 1.0 (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.opensource.org/licenses/ecl1.php

  *

  * 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.kuali.rice.kns.datadictionary.validation.constraint;

 import java.io.Serializable;

 /**

  * This is the marker interface for constraints. Constraints are a central concept in the Rice data dictionary validation, and are the

  * primary mechanism by which the validation of an object or one of its attributes takes place. For example, by imposing a length constraint

  * on an attribute of a business object, it's possible to indicate that only values shorter (or longer) than a specific number of characters

  * are valid for that attribute. 

  * 

  * Any interface that extends Constraint is by definition a constraint, and may have one of the following defined:

  * 

  * - A sub-interface for {@see Constrainable} that advises on how a constraint maps to data dictionary metadata

  * - A {@see ConstraintProvider} that looks up constraints for a specific constrainable definition

  * - A {@see ConstraintProcessor} that processes the constraint against some object value to determine if it is valid

  * 

  * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org) 

  * @since 1.1

  */

 public interface Constraint extends Serializable {

         // Empty - since this is a marker interface, all of the interesting stuff is in interfaces or classes that extend this interface

 }