    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}