/*
 * Hibernate, Relational Persistence for Idiomatic Java
 *
 * License: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 2.1 or later.
 * See the lgpl.txt file in the root directory or <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.html>.
 */
package org.hibernate.loader.plan.exec.spi;

import org.hibernate.loader.EntityAliases;

Aggregates the alias/suffix information in relation to an EntityReference todo : add a contract (interface) that can be shared by entity and collection alias info objects as lhs/rhs of a join ? 
Author:
Steve Ebersole/**
 * Aggregates the alias/suffix information in relation to an {@link org.hibernate.loader.plan.spi.EntityReference}
 *
 * todo : add a contract (interface) that can be shared by entity and collection alias info objects as lhs/rhs of a join ?
 *
 * @author Steve Ebersole
 */
public interface EntityReferenceAliases {
	
Obtain the table alias used for referencing the table of the EntityReference.

Note that this currently just returns the "root alias" whereas sometimes an entity reference covers
multiple tables.  todo : to help manage this, consider a solution like TableAliasRoot from the initial ANTLR re-work
see http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/hibernate/core/branches/antlr3/src/main/java/org/hibernate/sql/ast/alias/TableAliasGenerator.java
Returns:
The (root) table alias for the described entity reference./**
	 * Obtain the table alias used for referencing the table of the EntityReference.
	 * <p/>
	 * Note that this currently just returns the "root alias" whereas sometimes an entity reference covers
	 * multiple tables.  todo : to help manage this, consider a solution like TableAliasRoot from the initial ANTLR re-work
	 * see http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/hibernate/core/branches/antlr3/src/main/java/org/hibernate/sql/ast/alias/TableAliasGenerator.java
	 *
	 * @return The (root) table alias for the described entity reference.
	 */
	public String getTableAlias();

	
Obtain the column aliases for the select fragment columns associated with the described entity reference.  These
are the column renames by which the values can be extracted from the SQL result set.
Returns:
The column aliases associated with the described entity reference./**
	 * Obtain the column aliases for the select fragment columns associated with the described entity reference.  These
	 * are the column renames by which the values can be extracted from the SQL result set.
	 *
	 * @return The column aliases associated with the described entity reference.
	 */
	public EntityAliases getColumnAliases();
}