001/*-
002 *******************************************************************************
003 * Copyright (c) 2011, 2016 Diamond Light Source Ltd.
004 * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
005 * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
006 * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
007 * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
008 *
009 * Contributors:
010 *    Peter Chang - initial API and implementation and/or initial documentation
011 *******************************************************************************/
012
013package org.eclipse.january.metadata;
014
015import java.io.Serializable;
016
017import org.eclipse.january.dataset.IMetadataProvider;
018
019/**
020 * This is a marker interface for all metadata items which can be associated
021 * with a dataset.
022 * <p>
023 * All sub-interfaces must have an initialize method and all implementations
024 * must have a null constructor.
025 * <p>
026 * Extending sub-interfaces of MetadataType is strongly discouraged. That is,
027 * metadata interfaces (sub-interfaces of MetadataType) should be considered
028 * to be "final". This simplifies the implementation of {@link IMetadataProvider#getMetadata(Class)}, etc.
029 */
030public interface MetadataType extends Serializable, Cloneable {
031
032        /**
033         * Make a deep copy of metadata
034         * @return clone
035         */
036        public MetadataType clone();
037}