Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of ApertureDataObjectFolder

Timestamp:

10/20/05 13:38:14 (20 years ago)

Author:

sauermann

Comment:

--

ApertureDataObjectFolder

@@ +1 @@
+{{{
+#!java
+/**
+ * A general interface for folder data objects. 
+ * Folders are important for structured datasources. They will also contain all the links
+ * from the folder to its containing children (using the appropriate relating property) in
+ * its getMetadata() RDF Map. So you can get the identifiers of children either using hte
+ * getChildren() method or via getMetadata() where all the children are also listed.
+ * Listing the relations between folders and their children is very useful for large
+ * search databases, that can make use of the semantic structure.
+ * 
+ */
+public interface DataObjectFolder {
+
+    
+        /**
+         * Gets the data object's parent, if any.
+         * 
+         * @return the parent DataObject, or null when this DataObject has no parent.
+         */
+        public DataObject getParent();
+    
+        /**
+         * Gets the data object's children, if any. This may be null to indicate that there
+         * are no children. 
+         * @return an Iterator over DataObject objects
+         */
+        public Iterator getChildren();
+
+    
+        /**
+         * Get the source-specific metadata and data.
+         * The used keys and values and implementation-dependent. 
+         * For java1.4 compability reasons, the map is untyped.
+         * It is already titled RDFMap to reflect our ideas regarding RDF
+         * 
+         * @return The scheme-specific metadata.
+         */
+        public RDFMap getMetadata();
+
+}
+}}}