[higgins-dev] Complex attr values as blank entities

["Jim Sermersheim" <jimse@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I started playing around with creating an interface like this:

public interface IBlankEntity extends IHasAttributes {

    public IEntityModel getModel() throws IdASException;

}

and made IEntity extend that.  No real change there -- just injected another interface layer.  

Next I looked at somehow making this IBlankEntity the supertype for IComplexAttrValue.  That doesn't work so well because of the getModel() method.  IAttributeValue already has getModel() which returns an IAttributeValueModel.

So, I need to re-gather the actual requirements for this.  Right now we have:

public interface IComplexAttrValue extends IAttributeValue, IHasAttributes {}

and we have

public interface IEntity extends IHasAttributes {

    public IContext getContext() throws IdASException;

    public String getEntityID() throws IdASException;

}

So, in effect a complex attribute is the same as an entity today other than IEntity allows one to get its context and entity ID.

Is it just a terminology thing?  I can continue on the path I was on and keep getModel on IEntity.  This would mean IBlankEntity is exactly the same as IHasAttributes, but maybe people like the name better?

Let me know if you have an opinion.

Jim