1 /**
2 * Copyright 2005-2015 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 import org.kuali.rice.krad.datadictionary.validation.capability.Constrainable;
21 import org.kuali.rice.krad.datadictionary.validation.constraint.provider.ConstraintProvider;
22 import org.kuali.rice.krad.datadictionary.validation.processor.ConstraintProcessor;
23
24 /**
25 * This is the marker interface for constraints. Constraints are a central concept in the Rice data dictionary
26 * validation, and are the
27 * primary mechanism by which the validation of an object or one of its attributes takes place. For example, by
28 * imposing
29 * a length constraint
30 * on an attribute of a business object, it's possible to indicate that only values shorter (or longer) than a specific
31 * number of characters
32 * are valid for that attribute.
33 *
34 * Any interface that extends Constraint is by definition a constraint, and may have one of the following defined:
35 *
36 * - A sub-interface for {@link Constrainable} that advises on how a constraint maps to data dictionary metadata
37 * - A {@link ConstraintProvider} that looks up constraints for a specific constrainable definition
38 * - A {@link ConstraintProcessor} that processes the constraint against some object value to determine if it is valid
39 *
40 * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)
41 * @since 1.1
42 */
43 public interface Constraint extends Serializable {
44
45 // Empty - since this is a marker interface, all of the interesting stuff is in interfaces or classes that extend this interface
46
47 }