1 /**
2 * Copyright 2005-2013 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.bo;
17
18 import org.kuali.rice.core.api.mo.ModelObjectBasic;
19
20 /**
21 * Interface for classes that act as a business object within the framework
22 *
23 * <p>
24 * Business objects are special objects to the Rice framework that indicate an object has certain features
25 * (like refresh). Most business objects are persistable, see @{link PersistableBusinessObject},
26 * which means Rice can provide handle the CRUD operations performed on the object. In addition, metadata from the
27 * ORM layer will be available on these objects that is consumed by the framework to enable features.
28 * </p>
29 *
30 * <p>
31 * Business objects are a special kind of data object within the system. A data object is just a general object that
32 * provides data within the system and can be used to back the user interfaces. In general, how the system doesn't
33 * know anything about how data objects are built (for example they could come from services or some other mechanism).
34 * Make a data object implement BusinessObject causes the system to make assumptions regarding the handling of that
35 * object.
36 * </p>
37 *
38 * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)
39 */
40 public interface BusinessObject extends ModelObjectBasic {
41
42 /**
43 * Invoked to refresh business objects related to the parent based on their key field values
44 *
45 * <p>
46 * During processing (for example accepting user input) the field values that participate in relationships can
47 * become out of sync with the related business objects (for example: suppose our business object has a property
48 * name bookId with a related object of type Book that contains the id property. If the user changes the value
49 * for the bookId property, our id property on the related book and the associated information is still pointing
50 * to the previous book id). This method is invoked to indicate the related objects should be refreshed based
51 * on their related keys. For @{link PersistableBusinessObject} implementations, most refreshes can be handled
52 * by the ORM tool
53 * </p>
54 */
55 public abstract void refresh();
56 }