/*
 *    GeoTools - The Open Source Java GIS Toolkit
 *    http://geotools.org
 *
 *    (C) 2008, Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)
 *
 *    This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 *    modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
 *    License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
 *    version 2.1 of the License.
 *
 *    This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
 *    Lesser General Public License for more details.
 */
package org.geotools.coverage.io.range;

import java.util.Set;

import org.opengis.feature.type.Name;
import org.opengis.util.InternationalString;

/**
 * Defines the fields (categories, measures, or values) in the range records 
 * available for each location in the coverage domain. Each such field may be 
 * a scalar (numeric or text) value, such as population density, or a vector 
 * (compound or tensor) of many similar values, such as incomes by race, or 
 * radiances by wavelength. 
 * 
 * @author Simone Giannecchini, GeoSolutions
 * 
 *
 *
 * @source $URL: http://svn.osgeo.org/geotools/trunk/modules/unsupported/coverage-experiment/coverage-api/src/main/java/org/geotools/coverage/io/range/RangeType.java $
 */
public interface RangeType {
	/**
	 * Retrieves this {@link RangeType} {@link org.opengis.feature.type.Name}.
	 * 
	 * @return this {@link RangeType} {@link org.opengis.feature.type.Name}.
	 */
	public Name getName();

	/**
	 * Retrieves this {@link RangeType} description as {@link InternationalString}.
	 * 
	 * @return this {@link RangeType} description as {@link InternationalString}.
	 */
	public InternationalString getDescription();

	/**
	 * Get the {@link FieldType} {@link org.opengis.feature.type.Name}s.
	 * 
	 * @return List of {@link FieldType} names
	 */
	public Set<Name> getFieldTypeNames();

	/**
	 * Get the Number of FieldTypes in the range
	 * 
	 * @return number of measure types
	 */
	public int getNumFieldTypes();

	/**
	 * Get all the measure types of this Coverage type
	 * 
	 * @return Set of FieldType instances
	 */
	public Set<FieldType> getFieldTypes();

	/**
	 * Get the FieldType by name
	 * 
	 * @param name
	 *            name of the FieldType in the form "nameSpace:localPart".
	 *            In case of no nameSpace, the simple "localPart" section
	 *            need to be provided
	 * @return FieldType instance or null if not found
	 */
	public FieldType getFieldType(String name);
}