/*
* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
* contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
* this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
* The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
* (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.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* 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.apache.cocoon;
/**
* This interface is implemented by those classes that change
* their behavior/results over time (non-ergodic).
*
* @author <a href="mailto:stefano@apache.org">Stefano Mazzocchi</a>
* @author <a href="mailto:pier@apache.org">Pierpaolo Fumagalli</a>
* @version CVS $Id$
*/
public interface Modifiable
{
/**
* Queries the class to estimate its ergodic period termination.
* <br>
* This method is called to ensure the validity of a cached product. It
* is the class responsibility to provide the fastest possible
* implementation of this method or, whether this is not possible and the
* costs of the change evaluation is comparable to the production costs,
* to return <b>true</b> directly with no further delay, thus reducing
* the evaluation overhead to a minimum.
*
* @return <b>true</b> if the class ergodic period is over and the class
* would behave differently if processed again, <b>false</b> if the
* resource is still ergodic so that it doesn't require
* reprocessing.
*/
boolean modifiedSince( long date );
}