/**
* 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.metamodel.schema;
import java.io.Serializable;
/**
* Represents a column and it's metadata description. Columns reside within a
* Table and can be used as keys for relationships between tables.
*
* @see Table
*/
public interface Column extends Comparable<Column>, Serializable, NamedStructure {
/**
* Gets the name of this Column
*
* @return the name of this Column
*/
@Override
public String getName();
/**
* Returns the column number or index. Note: This column number is 0-based
* whereas the JDBC is 1-based.
*
* @return the number of this column.
*/
public int getColumnNumber();
/**
* Gets the type of the column
*
* @return this column's type.
*/
public ColumnType getType();
/**
* Gets the table for which this column belong
*
* @return this column's table.
*/
public Table getTable();
/**
* Determines whether or not this column accepts null values.
*
* @return true if this column accepts null values, false if not and null if
* not known.
*/
public Boolean isNullable();
/**
* Gets any remarks/comments to this column.
*
* @return any remarks/comments to this column.
*/
public String getRemarks();
/**
* Gets the data type size of this column.
*
* @return the data type size of this column or null if the size is not
* determined or known.
*/
public Integer getColumnSize();
/**
* Gets the native type of this column. A native type is the name of the
* data type as defined in the datastore.
*
* @return the name of the native type.
*/
public String getNativeType();
/**
* Determines if this column is indexed.
*
* @return true if this column is indexed or false if not (or not known)
*/
public boolean isIndexed();
/**
* Determines if this column is (one of) the primary key(s) of its table.
*
* @return true if this column is a primary key, or false if not (or if this
* is not determinable).
*/
public boolean isPrimaryKey();
}