/**
* AnalyzerBeans
* Copyright (C) 2014 Neopost - Customer Information Management
*
* 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.eobjects.analyzer.reference;
import org.eobjects.analyzer.beans.api.Close;
import org.eobjects.analyzer.beans.api.Initialize;
/**
* A dictionary represents a set of values grouped together with a label.
*
* Examples of meaningful dictionaries:
* <ul>
* <li>Lastnames</li>
* <li>Female given names</li>
* <li>Product codes</li>
* </ul>
*
* Often times a dictionary will implement a caching mechanism to prevent having
* to hold all values of the dictionary in memory.
*
* A dictionary can have methods annotated with @Initialize and @Close. These
* will be called before and after a job is executed where the given dictionary
* is used.
*
* Note: Dictionaries should be thread-safe!! Make sure to make sensible use of
* synchronized blocks if there are race conditions in the dictionary
* implementation.
*
* @see Initialize
* @see Close
*
*
*/
public interface Dictionary extends ReferenceData {
public boolean containsValue(String value);
/**
* Gets the dictionaries contents as a ReferenceValues object. Use with
* caution because this might require the dictionary to do eager
* initialization of all values.
*
* @return
*/
public ReferenceValues<String> getValues();
}