Package tribble.archive

See:
Description

Interface Summary

Archive<DocType extends ArchiveDocument>	Generic document archive (base class).
ArchiveDocument	Generic read-only archive document.
ArchiveReader<DocType extends ArchiveDocument>	Generic document archive storage reader.
ArchiveWriter<DocType extends WritableDocument>	Generic document archive storage writer.
WritableDocument	Generic writable archive document.

Class Summary

AbstractDocument	Generic read-only archive document.
AbstractDocumentIterator	Abstract generic document set iterator.
AbstractDocumentSet	Asbtract generic document set.
AbstractWritableDocument	Generic read-only archive document.
DocumentProperty	Generic document property.
WritableProperty	Generic modifiable document property.

Package tribble.archive Description

Document Archive Classes

The classes in this package provide interfaces and abstract classes for implementing document archive storage systems, which are systems capable of storing and retrieving documents of some kind.

What constitutes a "document" is left up to the implementation, but generally speaking a document consists of some kind of content data (e.g., an image, text, XML document, audio data, etc.), and one or more properties. The properties, also known as the document meta-data, provide attributes for the document beyond the contents of the document itself. Typically, one or more of these properties are used to index the document within the document archive storage system.

The basis of a document archive system is the ArchiveDocument class, which is an interface providing methods for implementing read-only document subclasses. Such document objects are retrieved from an archive reader, which is a subclass of the ArchiveReader interface. Archive readers can retrieve documents by their IDs, or search for multiple matching documents within the archive.

Likewise, the WritableDocument interface provides the basic methods for implementing writable document subclasses, which are necessary in order to create and store documents in a document archive system. Such document objects are created and stored by an archive writer, which is a subclass of the ArchiveWriter interface.

In general, the methods of these classes throw IOExceptions whenever they encounter error conditions.