content: /**
   * <copyright>
   *
   * Copyright (c) 2006 IBM Corporation and others.
   * All rights reserved.   This program and the accompanying materials
   * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
   * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
   * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
   * 
   * Contributors: 
   *   IBM - Initial API and implementation
   *
   * </copyright>
   *
   * $Id$
   */
  package org.eclipse.jet.xpath;
  
  
  /**
   * Interface that manages annotations of model elements.
   *
   */
  public interface IAnnotationManager
  {
  
    /**
     * Return the annotation object corresponding to the model object. If the
     * manager has not annotation object for the model object, it must create one.
     * Repeated calls to the method with the same argument must return the same
     * result.
     * @param modelObject the model object for which the annotation object is sought.
     * @return the annotation object.
     * @throws NullPointerException if <code>modelObject</code> is <code>null</code>
     */
    public abstract Object getAnnotationObject(Object modelObject);
  
    /**
     * Test whether the manager has annotations of the given model object.
     * @param modelObject
     * @return <code>true</code> if there are annotations, <code>false</code> otherwise.
     */
    public abstract boolean hasAnnotations(Object modelObject);
  
  }
  