On 2 April 2012 10:44, Hardy Ferentschik <ha...@hibernate.org> wrote: > > On Apr 2, 2012, at 11:16 AM, Emmanuel Bernard wrote: > >> What's your definition of an SPI, in the team we have slightly different >> ones. >> >> In Hibernate search an SPI is targeted at frameworks or hyper advanced user >> who are willing to integrate or enhance Hibernate Search. Otherwise, they >> are considered APIs - which includes interfaces you might need to implement >> like FieldBridge. Hibernate ORM has a different semantic where an API is >> what the application directly code on. > > The HV interpretation of SPI is the same view as in ORM. Imo It makes for a > simpler, easier to understand cut between API and SPI. > >> For your second question, I have used the idea of an interface combined with >> an abstract class with success. The interface used by the consumers and the >> abstract class extended by implementors. > > I also think that an abstract class can be beneficial. However, I would not > generalize this approach. In the case of the HV interfaces in question we > have very simple interfaces > (single method ones) with a very low likelihood that they will change. I > don't think that the abstract base class is needed in this case, especially > since it forces you to use inheritance.
I agree as I don't think we have ever set a rule in stone, but it doesn't force to use inheritance. It's a suggested base class, the hard contract is still the interface only. So the implementor can decide to stop inheriting at any time if it suites best: a base class is indeed not guaranteed to be useful, but when it's not it doesn't make things harder. Cheers, Sanne _______________________________________________ hibernate-dev mailing list hibernate-dev@lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/hibernate-dev
