Does the UIMA Java framework support modifying or extend the java class generated by JCasGen corresponding to a custom Type? If so, are there any common circumstances where this is necessary?
I didn’t see anything in the examples or documentation about modifying the generated classes, but I also didn’t see anything saying you couldn’t. I suspect that this is not supported (and that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to pass a CAS between distributed UIMA AS components, or between a Java annotator and a C++ one). But it would be nice to know for certain. The reason I ask is that the set of data structures supported by UIMA types (individual FS references, FSList linked lists, and FSArray arrays) is fairly limited compared to modern programming languages, which often directly support associative arrays, trees, and graphs. I’m trying to understand whether this is a restriction on the implementation of custom types (which it would be if modifying/extending the generated class was not supported), or just on the public interface accessible via the UIMA API. David
