/*
* BioJava development code
*
* This code may be freely distributed and modified under the
* terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence. This should
* be distributed with the code. If you do not have a copy,
* see:
*
* http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
*
* Copyright for this code is held jointly by the individual
* authors. These should be listed in @author doc comments.
*
* For more information on the BioJava project and its aims,
* or to join the biojava-l mailing list, visit the home page
* at:
*
* http://www.biojava.org/
*
*/
package org.biojava.nbio.ontology;
import java.util.Set;
/**
* This is an interface for optimizing ontology operators.
*
* <p>
* Some ontology implementations will be able to compute some derived properties
* very quickly because of how they store their data. This is likely to out-
* perform generic implementations of algorithms using the Ontology interface
* to get the same result. Ontology instances provide an instance of
* OntologyOps, publishing optimizations of some common operations. The reasoner
* may then choose to call OntologyOps methods on the Ontology instance rather
* than using its fall-back implementations.
* </p>
*
* @author Matthew Pocock
* @since 1.4
*/
public interface OntologyOps {
/**
* Get the set of all remote terms.
*
* <p>
* We do not currently specify whether this set is mutable or not, and if it
* will reflect modifications to the optimised ontolgies.
* </p>
*
* @return a Set containing all remote terms in the ontology
*/
public Set getRemoteTerms();
}