gov.nasa.arc.brahms.vm.api.common
Interface IConceptualObject

All Superinterfaces:

IConcept, IConceptualConcept, IType, IUserDefinedType

public interface IConceptualObject
extends IConceptualConcept

A conceptual object is used to allow for a user to track things that exist as concepts in people's minds, like the concept of an order. The concepts do not exist as such but do have incarnations in the form of real artifacts, such as a fax, a form, or a database record. Through conceptual objects statistics can be generated such as touch time and cycle time and object flows can be generated through a work process.

Version:

$Revision: 1.1 $ $Date: 2009/11/23 18:38:31 $ $Author: rnado $

Author:

Ron van Hoof

Field Summary

Fields inherited from interface gov.nasa.arc.brahms.vm.api.common.IUserDefinedType

UDT

Method Summary

boolean	acquireMemoryReference(IContext ctx) Has the calling agent acquire a reference to this IConceptualObject indicating that it wishes to use this reference and to ensure that this IConceptualObject will not get deleted.
boolean	isInstanceOf(IConceptualClass cls) Determines whether this object is an instance of the specified class.
void	releaseMemoryReference(IContext ctx) Has the calling agent release a reference to this IConceptualObject indicating that it no longer wishes to use this reference and to allow for this IConceptualObject to be deleted.

Methods inherited from interface gov.nasa.arc.brahms.vm.api.common.IConcept

getAttribute, getAttributes, getRelation, getRelations, isLocal

Methods inherited from interface gov.nasa.arc.brahms.vm.api.common.IType

getName, getType

Method Detail

acquireMemoryReference

boolean acquireMemoryReference(IContext ctx)
                               throws ExternalException

Has the calling agent acquire a reference to this IConceptualObject indicating that it wishes to use this reference and to ensure that this IConceptualObject will not get deleted.

Note that multiple calls to this method will result in only one reference to be maintained for the calling agent.

This method should only be used by external agents.

Parameters:

ctx - the IContext for the acquisition providing information about the agent acquiring the reference

Returns:

boolean true if the reference could be acquired, false if this IConceptualObject is not a memory managed element.

Throws:

ExternalException - if IConceptualObject is a memory managed element and was already deleted or if an internal error occurs.

releaseMemoryReference

void releaseMemoryReference(IContext ctx)
                            throws ExternalException

Has the calling agent release a reference to this IConceptualObject indicating that it no longer wishes to use this reference and to allow for this IConceptualObject to be deleted.

Note that multiple calls to this method will result in the removal of the single reference maintained for the calling agent, once removed the operation has no effect on subsequent calls.

This method should only be used by external agents.

Parameters:

ctx - the IContext for the acquisition providing information about the agent acquiring the reference

Throws:

ExternalException - if an internal error occurs.

isInstanceOf

boolean isInstanceOf(IConceptualClass cls)
                     throws ExternalException

Determines whether this object is an instance of the specified class.

Returns:

true if this object is an instance of the specified class, false otherwise

Throws:

ExternalException - if cls is null