/*
 * Licensed to The OpenNMS Group, Inc (TOG) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the LICENSE.md file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.
 *
 * TOG licenses this file to You under the GNU Affero General
 * Public License Version 3 (the "License") or (at your option)
 * any later version.  You may not use this file except in
 * compliance with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the
 * License at:
 *
 *      https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND,
 * either express or implied.  See the License for the specific
 * language governing permissions and limitations under the
 * License.
 */
package org.opennms.netmgt.collection.api;

import org.opennms.netmgt.collection.api.AttributeType;

/**
 * This class encapsulates the immutable parts of a {@link CollectionAttribute} such as the name,
 * metric type, and group membership.
 */
public interface CollectionAttributeType {

    /**
     * <p>The type of metric that the attribute represents.</p>
     *
     * @return a {@link AttributeType} object.
     */
    AttributeType getType();

    /**
     * Human readable name for the attribute. Normally these are specified by an "alias" field
     * in the data collection configuration.
     * 
     * @return a {@link java.lang.String} object.
     */
    String getName();
    
    /**
     * <p>equals</p>
     *
     * @param o a {@link java.lang.Object} object.
     * @return a boolean.
     */
    @Override
    boolean equals(Object o);
    
    /**
     * <p>hashCode</p>
     *
     * @return a int.
     */
    @Override
    int hashCode();
    
    /**
     * <p>getGroupType</p>
     *
     * @return a {@link org.opennms.netmgt.collection.api.AttributeGroupType} object.
     */
    AttributeGroupType getGroupType();
    
    /**
     * <p>storeAttribute</p>
     *
     * @param attribute a {@link org.opennms.netmgt.collection.api.CollectionAttribute} object.
     * @param persister a {@link org.opennms.netmgt.collection.api.Persister} object.
     */
    void storeAttribute(CollectionAttribute attribute, Persister persister);
}
