Obsolete Proposal for CAS and CAS View Interface Redesign

IMPORTANT: This proposal did not acheive a consensus among developers and will not be implemented. It is being left here only for informational purposes, so that we might refer to it in any future redesign.

This page lists the methods on each interface in the proposed redesign. For rationale and discussion see http://www.mail-archive.com/uima-dev@incubator.apache.org/msg00945.html.

"D-" before a method name indicates that the method is deprecated.

New methods, deleted methods, and methods with changed return types are specifically noted.

CommonCas

• CONSTANTS
• D- addFsToIndexes(FS)
• createFeaturePath()
• createFeatureValuePath()
• createFilteredIterator(FSIterator, FSMatchConstraint)
• fs2listIterator(FSIterator)
• getConstraintFactory()
• D- getDocumentLanaguage()
• D- getDocumentText()
• D- getIndexRepository()
• D- getSofaDataArray()
• D- getSofaDataStream()
• D- getSofaDataURI()
• getSofaIterator()
• D- getViewName()
• D- removeFsFromIndexes(FS)
• reset()
• D- setDocumentLanguage(String)
• D- setDocumentText(String)
• D- setSofaDataArray(FeatureStrucutre, String)
• D- setSofaDataString(String, String)
• D- setSofaDataURI(String, String)
• size()

Deleted

• D- createSofa(SofaID, String) [deprecated since 2.0, and this proposal breaks compatibility for multi-sofa code anyway}

CommonCasView

• addFsToIndexes(FS)
• getDocumentLanaguage()
• getDocumentText()
• getIndexRepository()
• getSofaDataArray()
• getSofaDataStream()
• getSofaDataURI()
• getViewName()
• removeFsFromIndexes(FS)
• setDocumentLanguage(String)
• setDocumentText(String)
• setSofaDataArray(FeatureStrucutre, String)
• setSofaDataString(String, String)
• setSofaDataURI(String, String)

CAS

(extends CommonCas)

• D- createAnnotation(Type, int, int)
• createArrayFS(int)
• createBooleanArrayFS(int)
• createDoubleArrayFS(int)
• createFloatArrayFS(int)
• createFS(Type)
• createIntArrayFS(int)
• createLongArrayFS(int)
• createStringArrayFS(int)

• createView(String) [CHANGED - now returns type CasView]

• D- getAnnotationIndex()
• D- getAnnotationIndex(Type)
• getAnnotationType()
• getBeginFeature()
• D- getDocumentAnnotation()
• getEndFeature()
• getJCas()
• getLowLevelCAS()
• D- getSofa()

• getView(SofaFS) [CHANGED - now returns type CasView]

• getView(String) [CHANGED - now returns type CasView]

• setCurrentComponentInfo(ComponentInfo)

• getCurrentView() [NEW]

• createAnnotation(Type, int, int, SofaFS) [NEW]

Deleted

• getJCas(SofaFS) [can be replaced by getView(SofaFS).getJCas()]

• D- getJCas(SofaID) [deprecated since 2.0]

• D- getSofa(SofaID) [deprecated since 2.0]

• D- getTCAS() [deprecated since 2.0, replaced by getView()]

• D- getTCAS(SofaFS) [deprecated since 2.0, replaced by getView(String)]

CasView

(extends CommonCasView)

• createAnnotation(Type, int, int)
• getAnnotationIndex()
• getAnnotationIndex(Type)
• getDocumentAnnotation()
• getSofa()

• getCAS() [NEW - gets the CAS that contains this view)

Also we will add the following convenience methods that forward to the same method on CAS (this is still the subject of some debate)

• createArrayFS(int)
• createBooleanArrayFS(int)
• createDoubleArrayFS(int)
• createFloatArrayFS(int)
• createFS(Type)
• createIntArrayFS(int)
• createLongArrayFS(int)
• createStringArrayFS(int)

JCas

(extends CommonCas)

• checkArrayBounds(int ,int)
• createView(String)
• getCas()
• getCasImpl()
• getCasType(int)

• D- getDocumentAnnotation() [deprecated since 1.4]

• D- getDocumentAnnotationFs()
• getFloatArray0L()
• getFSArray0L()
• D- getFSIndexRepository()
• getIntegerArray0L()
• getJfsFromCaddr(int)
• D- getJFSIndexRepository()
• getLowLevelCas()
• getLowLevelIndexRepository()
• getRequiredFeature(Type, String)
• getRequiredFeatureDE(Type, String, String, boolean)
• getRequiredType(String)
• D- getSofa()
• getStringArray0L()
• getType(int)

• D- getType(TOP) [was already deprecated - time to remove yet??]

• getView(SofaFS) [CHANGED - now returns type JCasView]

• getView(String) [CHANGED - now returns type JCasView]

• D- processInit() [was already deprecated - time to remove yet??]

• putJfsFromCaddr(int, FeatureStructure)

• getCurrentView() [NEW]

Deleted

• getJCas(Sofa) [replaced by getView(Sofa)]

• D- getSofa(SofaID) [deprecated since 2.0]

• getTypeSystem() [not necessary to define on JCas since it is already on CommonCas]

JCasView

(extends CommonCasView)

• getDocumentAnnotationFs()
• getJFSIndexRepository()
• getSofa()

• getJCas() [NEW - gets the JCas that contains this view)

LowLevelCAS

It's not clear exactly what to do with the Low Level CAS APIs. There don't appear to be Sofa data access APIs here, so I think we could just do only the following changes:

• Deprecate ll_getIndexRepository()

• Add ll_getView(String) [return type LowLevelCasView]

• Add ll_getCurrentView() [return type LowLevelCasView]

• Change return type of ll_getSofaCasView(int) to LowLevelCasView
• Define new interface LowLevelCasView with just one method: ll_getIndexRepository()

Or, perhaps simpler would be to not define a LowLevelCasView interface at all but just add to LowLevelCAS the method:
ll_getIndexRepository(String viewName)

JCAS-generated Cover Classes

This is still under some debate. The main issues are:

1. What view does TOP.addToIndexes() add to?
2. What Sofa does new Annotation(JCas) refer to?

A rough proposal, not yet agreed upon:

1. deprecate TOP.addToIndexes(). Document that it's here only to
   provide compatibility with older single-sofa code, and does not
   support multi-sofa code. Suggest that users migrate to
   JCasView.addFsToIndexes(fs) instead.

1. Add the constructors AnnotationBase(JCas, Sofa) and
   AnnotationBase(JCasView). These set the sofa pointer of the new
   annotation appropriately.

1. Deprecate the constructor AnnotationBase(JCas). It always sets the
   Sofa reference to the "current view" and does not support multi-sofa
   code. Users should migrate to one of the other constructors.

1. Apply the above changes to all subclasses of AnnotationBase, and
   update JCasGen to generate the appropriate constructors for subclasses
   of AnnotationBase.

1. Either we enhance our migration utility so that it makes these
   constructor changes automatically, or we require users to rerun
   JCasGen when the migrate to Apache. The latter is starting to not
   sound like such a bad thing. In any case, custom constructors that a
   user added would need to be manually addressed by the user.