Identifiable.java

/*
 * 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.geode.lang;

import java.io.Serializable;

/**
 * The Identifiable interface defines a contract for classes whose Object instances can be uniquely
 * identified relative to other Object instances within the same class type hierarchy.
 * <p/>
 * 
 * @param <T> the class type of the identifier.
 * @see java.lang.Comparable
 * @since GemFire 7.0
 */
public interface Identifiable<T extends Comparable<T>> extends Serializable {

  /**
   * Gets the identifier uniquely identifying this Object instance.
   * <p/>
   * 
   * @return an identifier uniquely identifying this Object.
   */
  public T getId();

}