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package com.sun.enterprise.deployment.annotation;

import java.util.Map;
import java.lang.annotation.Annotation;

/**
 * This interface defines the result of an annotation processing 
 * returned by an annotation handler. Annotation handlers are supposed
 * to handle ONE annotation at a time. However, this simplistic 
 * approach does not always work as annotations on a element can have 
 * interdependencies. 
 *
 * This could be resolved trough sophisticated caching in the context
 * for instance but it is usually easier to notify the processor that 
 * a particular annotation handler has processed more than one annotation 
 * (which shouldn't be reprocessed subsequently...)
 *
 * @author Jerome Dochez
 */
public interface HandlerProcessingResult {
    
    /** 
     * Returns a map of annotation types processed by this handler as keys 
     * and a ResultType as a value to communicate the result of the annotation 
     * processing for each processed annotation types.
     * @return the map of processed annoation types and result.
     */
    public Map<Class<? extends Annotation>,ResultType> processedAnnotations();    
    
    /**
     * @return the overall result for this handler processing. Since handlers 
     * can process more than one annotation, this overall result will contain
     * the most severe error the haandler encountered while processing the
     * annotations.
     */
     public ResultType getOverallResult();
}