/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2006, 2008 IBM Corporation and others.
 * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
 * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
 * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
 * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
 *
 * Contributors:
 *     IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
 *******************************************************************************/

package org.eclipse.core.databinding.observable;

import java.util.Collection;

import org.eclipse.core.databinding.observable.list.IObservableList;
import org.eclipse.core.databinding.observable.set.IObservableSet;

/**
 * Interface for observable collections. Only general change listeners can be
 * added to an observable collection. Listeners interested in incremental
 * changes have to be added using more concrete subtypes such as
 * {@link IObservableList} or {@link IObservableSet}.
 * 
 * @noextend This interface is not intended to be extended by clients.
 * @noimplement This interface is not intended to be implemented by clients.
 *              Clients should instead subclass one of the classes that
 *              implement this interface. Note that direct implementers of this
 *              interface outside of the framework will be broken in future
 *              releases when methods are added to this interface. </p>
 * 
 * @since 1.0
 */
public interface IObservableCollection extends IObservable, Collection {

	/**
	 * Returns the element type of this observable collection, or
	 * <code>null</code> if this observable collection is untyped.
	 * 
	 * @return the element type of this observable collection, or
	 *         <code>null</code> if this observable collection is untyped.
	 */
	Object getElementType();

}