/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license
 * agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding
 * copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You 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 org.apache.geode.cache.query.types;

/**
 * Represents the type of a Map, a collection that contains keys as well as values and maintains an
 * association between key-value pairs. The type of the keys is obtained from the getKeyType method,
 * and the type of the values is obtained from the getElementType method.
 *
 * @since GemFire 4.0
 */
public interface MapType extends CollectionType {

  /**
   * Return the type of the keys in this type of map.
   * 
   * @return the ObjectType of the keys in this type of map.
   */
  public ObjectType getKeyType();

  /**
   * Return the type of the entries in this map. In the context of the query language, the entries
   * in a map are structs with key and value fields.
   */
  public StructType getEntryType();
}
