/*
* 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.flink.api.common.typeinfo;
import org.apache.flink.annotation.Public;
import org.apache.flink.api.common.ExecutionConfig;
import org.apache.flink.api.common.typeutils.TypeComparator;
/**
* An atomic type is a type that is treated as one indivisible unit and where the entire type acts
* as a key. The atomic type defines the method to create a comparator for this type as a key.
* Example atomic types are the basic types (int, long, String, ...) and comparable custom classes.
* <p>
* In contrast to atomic types are composite types, where the type information is aware of the individual
* fields and individual fields may be used as a key.
*/
@Public
public interface AtomicType<T> {
/**
* Creates a comparator for this type.
*
* @param sortOrderAscending True, if the comparator should define the order to be ascending,
* false, if the comparator should define the order to be descending.
* @param executionConfig The config from which the comparator will be parameterized. Parameterization
* includes for example registration of class tags for frameworks like Kryo.
* @return A comparator for this type.
*/
TypeComparator<T> createComparator(boolean sortOrderAscending, ExecutionConfig executionConfig);
}