/*
 * Copyright 2000-2002,2004 The Apache Software Foundation.
 * 
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * 
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * 
 * 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 com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.xni.grammars;

/**
 * A generic grammar for use in validating XML documents. The Grammar
 * object stores the validation information in a compiled form. Specific
 * subclasses extend this class and "populate" the grammar by compiling 
 * the specific syntax (DTD, Schema, etc) into the data structures used
 * by this object.
 * <p>
 * <strong>Note:</strong> The Grammar object is not useful as a generic 
 * grammar access or query object. In other words, you cannot round-trip 
 * specific grammar syntaxes with the compiled grammar information in 
 * the Grammar object. You <em>can</em> create equivalent validation
 * rules in your choice of grammar syntax but there is no guarantee that
 * the input and output will be the same.
 * 
 * <p> Right now, this class is largely a shell; eventually, 
 * it will be enriched by having more expressive methods added. </p>
 * will be moved from dtd.Grammar here.
 *
 * @author Jeffrey Rodriguez, IBM
 * @author Eric Ye, IBM
 * @author Andy Clark, IBM
 * @author Neil Graham, IBM
 *
 * @version $Id: Grammar.java,v 1.2.6.1 2005/09/06 08:56:54 neerajbj Exp $
 */

public interface Grammar {

    /**
     * get the <code>XMLGrammarDescription</code> associated with this
     * object
     */
    public XMLGrammarDescription getGrammarDescription ();
} // interface Grammar