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 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more

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 * 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

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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

 *

 */

public interface Grammar {

    /**

     * get the <code>XMLGrammarDescription</code> associated with this

     * object

     */

    public XMLGrammarDescription getGrammarDescription ();

} // interface Grammar