DefinitionSource.java

/*
 * $Source$
 * $Revision$
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2000 William Chesters
 *
 * Part of Melati (http://melati.org), a framework for the rapid
 * development of clean, maintainable web applications.
 *
 * Melati is free software; Permission is granted to copy, distribute
 * and/or modify this software under the terms either:
 *
 * a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
 *    Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
 *    any later version,
 *
 *    or
 *
 * b) any version of the Melati Software License, as published
 *    at http://melati.org
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License and
 * the Melati Software License along with this program;
 * if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
 * 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA to obtain the
 * GNU General Public License and visit http://melati.org to obtain the
 * Melati Software License.
 *
 * Feel free to contact the Developers of Melati (http://melati.org),
 * if you would like to work out a different arrangement than the options
 * outlined here.  It is our intention to allow Melati to be used by as
 * wide an audience as possible.
 *
 * 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 General Public License for more details.
 *
 * Contact details for copyright holder:
 *
 *     William Chesters <williamc At paneris.org>
 *     http://paneris.org/~williamc
 *     Obrechtstraat 114, 2517VX Den Haag, The Netherlands
 */

package org.melati.poem;

/**
 * A possible origin for metadata for a {@link Field}, {@link Column} 
 * or {@link Table}.
 *
 * The definition sources are unified during Poem initialisation.
 *
 * @see Database#unifyWithDB
 * @see Table#unifyWithDB
 * @see Column#unifyWithIndex
 *
 */ 
public class DefinitionSource {
  private String name;

  /** Constructor. */
  public DefinitionSource(Object what) {
    this.name = what.toString();
  }

  /**
   * {@inheritDoc}
   * @see java.lang.Object#toString()
   */
  public String toString() {
    return name;
  }

  /* Defined definition sources. */
  /** The DSD. */
  public static final DefinitionSource
      dsd = new DefinitionSource("the data structure definition");
  /** The metadata tables. */
  public static final DefinitionSource
      infoTables = new DefinitionSource("the data dictionary");
  /** The JDBC metatdata. */
  public static final DefinitionSource
      sqlMetaData = new DefinitionSource("the JDBC metadata");
  /** The current running application; transitory, 
   * as next time this data will be in the data dictionary. */
  public static final DefinitionSource
      runtime = new DefinitionSource("the running application");
}