oracle.binding.meta
Interface AccessorDefinition

All Superinterfaces:

AttributeDefinition, Definition, NamedDefinition, VariableDefinition

public interface AccessorDefinition

extends AttributeDefinition

Interface for holding accessor metadata. Accessor is an attribute that returns a collection.

Field Summary

Fields inherited from interface oracle.binding.meta.Definition

TYPE_ACCESSOR, TYPE_ATTRIBUTE, TYPE_DATACONTROL, TYPE_DEFINITION, TYPE_DEFINITIONCONTEXT, TYPE_METHODRETURN, TYPE_NAMED, TYPE_OPERATION, TYPE_PARAMETER, TYPE_STRUCTURE, TYPE_VARIABLE

Method Summary

StructureDefinition	getCollectionStructure() Retrieves the metadata of the collection itself.
NamedDefinition	getParentAccessor() Retrieves the AccessorDefinition of the parent accessor.
StructureDefinition	getStructure() Retrieves the metadata of the elements that the accessor collection contains.
boolean	isCollection() Since an accessor can return a structured object (or a collection).
boolean	isScalarCollection() Returns true if the accessor returns a collection of scalars.

Methods inherited from interface oracle.binding.meta.AttributeDefinition

getSourceTypeString, isKey, isReadOnly

Methods inherited from interface oracle.binding.meta.VariableDefinition

getDataControlDefinition, getJavaTypeString

Methods inherited from interface oracle.binding.meta.NamedDefinition

getDefinitionParent, getFullName, getName, getProperties, getProperty

Methods inherited from interface oracle.binding.meta.Definition

getDefinitionType

Method Detail

isCollection

public boolean isCollection()

Since an accessor can return a structured object (or a collection). This function should return true when the accessor represents a collection.

Returns:

true if the accessor is a collection, false if it is a simple object such as a String or an int.

isScalarCollection

public boolean isScalarCollection()

Returns true if the accessor returns a collection of scalars. Scalars are simple types that are not structured and are not collections.

Returns:

true if the accessor is a collection of scalars, false otherwise.

getStructure

public StructureDefinition getStructure()

Retrieves the metadata of the elements that the accessor collection contains.

Returns:

The metadata describing the structure of the elements in the accessor collection.

getCollectionStructure

public StructureDefinition getCollectionStructure()

Retrieves the metadata of the collection itself. It is possible that the collection itself has operations defined, such as if the collection is a class that implements a java.util.Collection interface and contains methods for searching through its elements. Please note that this is different from the getStructure API, which returns the metadata of the collection elements.

Returns:

The metadata describing the structure of the collection, or null if there is none available for the collection.

getParentAccessor

public NamedDefinition getParentAccessor()

Retrieves the AccessorDefinition of the parent accessor. A parent accessor is the accessor from which this accessor is obtained from. For example, we have a Dept structure, which contains an accessor called emps that returns a collection of Employee. Each Employee structure in turn contains an accessor called address that returns a structured type Address. The parent accessor of address would be the accessor emps in the Dept structure.

Returns:

The definition of the parent accessor.