/*
 * Hibernate, Relational Persistence for Idiomatic Java
 *
 * Copyright (c) 2010, Red Hat Inc. or third-party contributors as
 * indicated by the @author tags or express copyright attribution
 * statements applied by the authors.  All third-party contributions are
 * distributed under license by Red Hat Inc.
 *
 * This copyrighted material is made available to anyone wishing to use, modify,
 * copy, or redistribute it subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU
 * Lesser General Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
 *
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
 * or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU Lesser General Public License
 * for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
 * along with this distribution; if not, write to:
 * Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 * 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
 * Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
 */
package org.hibernate.annotations;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;

Mark an Entity or a Collection as immutable. No annotation means the element is mutable.

An immutable entity may not be updated by the application. Updates to an immutable
entity will be ignored, but no exception is thrown. @Immutable  must be used on root entities only. 


@Immutable placed on a collection makes the collection immutable, meaning additions and 
deletions to and from the collection are not allowed. A HibernateException is thrown in this case. 

Author:
Emmanuel Bernard/**
 * Mark an Entity or a Collection as immutable. No annotation means the element is mutable.
 * <p>
 * An immutable entity may not be updated by the application. Updates to an immutable
 * entity will be ignored, but no exception is thrown. &#064;Immutable  must be used on root entities only. 
 * </p>
 * <p>
 * &#064;Immutable placed on a collection makes the collection immutable, meaning additions and 
 * deletions to and from the collection are not allowed. A <i>HibernateException</i> is thrown in this case. 
 * </p>
 *
 * @author Emmanuel Bernard
 */
@java.lang.annotation.Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD})
@Retention( RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME )
public @interface Immutable {
}