/*
* Hibernate, Relational Persistence for Idiomatic Java
*
* Copyright (c) 2010, Red Hat Inc. or third-party contributors as
* indicated by the @author tags or express copyright attribution
* statements applied by the authors. All third-party contributions are
* distributed under license by Red Hat Inc.
*
* This copyrighted material is made available to anyone wishing to use, modify,
* copy, or redistribute it subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU
* Lesser General Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
*
* This program 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.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
* along with this distribution; if not, write to:
* Free Software Foundation, Inc.
* 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
* Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
*/
package org.hibernate.metamodel.domain;
/**
* Describes an attribute.
*
* @author Steve Ebersole
*/
public interface Attribute {
/**
* Retrieve the attribute name.
*
* @return The attribute name.
*/
public String getName();
/**
* Retrieve the declaring container for this attribute (entity/component).
*
* @return The attribute container.
*/
public AttributeContainer getAttributeContainer();
/**
* An attribute can be either:<ul>
* <li>singular - castable to {@link SingularAttribute}</li>
* <li>plural - castable to {@link PluralAttribute}
* </ul>
*
* @return True if attribute is singular; false if plural.
*/
public boolean isSingular();
}