001/**
002 * Copyright 2005-2018 The Kuali Foundation
003 *
004 * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
005 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
006 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
007 *
008 * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php
009 *
010 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
011 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
012 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
013 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
014 * limitations under the License.
015 */
016package org.kuali.rice.krad.datadictionary.validation.constraint;
017
018import java.io.Serializable;
019
020import org.kuali.rice.krad.datadictionary.validation.capability.Constrainable;
021import org.kuali.rice.krad.datadictionary.validation.constraint.provider.ConstraintProvider;
022import org.kuali.rice.krad.datadictionary.validation.processor.ConstraintProcessor;
023
024/**
025 * This is the marker interface for constraints. Constraints are a central concept in the Rice data dictionary
026 * validation, and are the
027 * primary mechanism by which the validation of an object or one of its attributes takes place. For example, by
028 * imposing
029 * a length constraint
030 * on an attribute of a business object, it's possible to indicate that only values shorter (or longer) than a specific
031 * number of characters
032 * are valid for that attribute.
033 *
034 * Any interface that extends Constraint is by definition a constraint, and may have one of the following defined:
035 *
036 * - A sub-interface for {@link Constrainable} that advises on how a constraint maps to data dictionary metadata
037 * - A {@link ConstraintProvider} that looks up constraints for a specific constrainable definition
038 * - A {@link ConstraintProcessor} that processes the constraint against some object value to determine if it is valid
039 *
040 * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)
041 * @since 1.1
042 */
043public interface Constraint extends Serializable {
044
045    // Empty - since this is a marker interface, all of the interesting stuff is in interfaces or classes that extend this interface
046
047}