net.sourceforge.toscanaj.model.context
Interface FCAElement

All Known Subinterfaces:

WritableFCAElement

All Known Implementing Classes:

DatabaseRetrievedObject, FCAElementImplementation

public interface FCAElement

Models an object or attribute in a formal context. Objects and attributes are only distinguished by their role, they do not have separate classes. We do not use plain Java objects for two reasons:

1. we want to store the order of the objects intrinsically;
2. we want to attach descriptions.

FCAElements are considered equal, if the data stored is equal.

See Also:

WritableFCAElement

Method Summary

int	getContextPosition() Return the position in a context if available.
java.lang.Object	getData() Returns the data stored in this FCAElement.
org.jdom.Element	getDescription() Returns the description of the FCAElement.

Method Detail

getData

public java.lang.Object getData()

Returns the data stored in this FCAElement. This is not allowed to be null.

getDescription

public org.jdom.Element getDescription()

Returns the description of the FCAElement. The return value of this method can be null.

getContextPosition

public int getContextPosition()

Return the position in a context if available. The return value is either the position in the according context (i.e. in the list of objects or attributes, depending on the usage of this element), or -1 if no position in a context is known.