001/*
002 *                    BioJava development code
003 *
004 * This code may be freely distributed and modified under the
005 * terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence.  This should
006 * be distributed with the code.  If you do not have a copy,
007 * see:
008 *
009 *      http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
010 *
011 * Copyright for this code is held jointly by the individual
012 * authors.  These should be listed in @author doc comments.
013 *
014 * For more information on the BioJava project and its aims,
015 * or to join the biojava-l mailing list, visit the home page
016 * at:
017 *
018 *      http://www.biojava.org/
019 *
020 */
021package org.biojava.nbio.ontology;
022
023import java.util.Set;
024
025/**
026 * This is an interface for optimizing ontology operators.
027 *
028 * <p>
029 * Some ontology implementations will be able to compute some derived properties
030 * very quickly because of how they store their data. This is likely to out-
031 * perform generic implementations of algorithms using the Ontology interface
032 * to get the same result. Ontology instances provide an instance of
033 * OntologyOps, publishing optimizations of some common operations. The reasoner
034 * may then choose to call OntologyOps methods on the Ontology instance rather
035 * than using its fall-back implementations.
036 * </p>
037 *
038 * @author Matthew Pocock
039 * @since 1.4
040 */
041public interface OntologyOps {
042        /**
043         * Get the set of all remote terms.
044         *
045         * <p>
046         * We do not currently specify whether this set is mutable or not, and if it
047         * will reflect modifications to the optimised ontolgies.
048         * </p>
049         *
050         * @return a Set containing all remote terms in the ontology
051         */
052        public Set getRemoteTerms();
053}