01: /*
02: * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
03: * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
04: * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
05: * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
06: * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
07: * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
08: *
09: * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10: *
11: * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12: * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13: * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14: * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15: * limitations under the License.
16: */
17: package org.apache.cocoon;
18:
19: /**
20: * This interface is implemented by those classes that change
21: * their behavior/results over time (non-ergodic).
22: *
23: * @author <a href="mailto:stefano@apache.org">Stefano Mazzocchi</a>
24: * @author <a href="mailto:pier@apache.org">Pierpaolo Fumagalli</a>
25: * @version CVS $Id: Modifiable.java 433543 2006-08-22 06:22:54Z crossley $
26: */
27: public interface Modifiable {
28: /**
29: * Queries the class to estimate its ergodic period termination.
30: * <br>
31: * This method is called to ensure the validity of a cached product. It
32: * is the class responsibility to provide the fastest possible
33: * implementation of this method or, whether this is not possible and the
34: * costs of the change evaluation is comparable to the production costs,
35: * to return <b>true</b> directly with no further delay, thus reducing
36: * the evaluation overhead to a minimum.
37: *
38: * @return <b>true</b> if the class ergodic period is over and the class
39: * would behave differently if processed again, <b>false</b> if the
40: * resource is still ergodic so that it doesn't require
41: * reprocessing.
42: */
43: boolean modifiedSince(long date);
44: }
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