1 /*
   2  * reserved comment block
   3  * DO NOT REMOVE OR ALTER!
   4  */
   5 /*
   6  * Copyright 2000-2002,2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
   7  *
   8  * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
   9  * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
  10  * You may obtain a copy of the License at
  11  *
  12  *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
  13  *
  14  * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  15  * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
  16  * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  17  * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  18  * limitations under the License.
  19  */
  20 
  21 package com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.xni.grammars;
  22 
  23 /**
  24  * A generic grammar for use in validating XML documents. The Grammar
  25  * object stores the validation information in a compiled form. Specific
  26  * subclasses extend this class and "populate" the grammar by compiling
  27  * the specific syntax (DTD, Schema, etc) into the data structures used
  28  * by this object.
  29  * <p>
  30  * <strong>Note:</strong> The Grammar object is not useful as a generic
  31  * grammar access or query object. In other words, you cannot round-trip
  32  * specific grammar syntaxes with the compiled grammar information in
  33  * the Grammar object. You <em>can</em> create equivalent validation
  34  * rules in your choice of grammar syntax but there is no guarantee that
  35  * the input and output will be the same.
  36  *
  37  * <p> Right now, this class is largely a shell; eventually,
  38  * it will be enriched by having more expressive methods added. </p>
  39  * will be moved from dtd.Grammar here.
  40  *
  41  * @author Jeffrey Rodriguez, IBM
  42  * @author Eric Ye, IBM
  43  * @author Andy Clark, IBM
  44  * @author Neil Graham, IBM
  45  *
  46  */
  47 
  48 public interface Grammar {
  49 
  50     /**
  51      * get the <code>XMLGrammarDescription</code> associated with this
  52      * object
  53      */
  54     public XMLGrammarDescription getGrammarDescription ();
  55 } // interface Grammar