source: trunk/src/xmlpatterns/documentationGroups.dox@ 780

/****************************************************************************
**
** Copyright (C) 2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies).
** All rights reserved.
** Contact: Nokia Corporation ([email protected])
**
** This file is part of the QtXmlPatterns module of the Qt Toolkit.
**
** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:LGPL$
** Commercial Usage
** Licensees holding valid Qt Commercial licenses may use this file in
** accordance with the Qt Commercial License Agreement provided with the
** Software or, alternatively, in accordance with the terms contained in
** a written agreement between you and Nokia.
**
** GNU Lesser General Public License Usage
** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Lesser
** General Public License version 2.1 as published by the Free Software
** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.LGPL included in the
** packaging of this file.  Please review the following information to
** ensure the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 requirements
** will be met: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html.
**
** In addition, as a special exception, Nokia gives you certain additional
** rights.  These rights are described in the Nokia Qt LGPL Exception
** version 1.1, included in the file LGPL_EXCEPTION.txt in this package.
**
** GNU General Public License Usage
** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU
** General Public License version 3.0 as published by the Free Software
** Foundation and appearing in the file LICENSE.GPL included in the
** packaging of this file.  Please review the following information to
** ensure the GNU General Public License version 3.0 requirements will be
** met: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
**
** If you have questions regarding the use of this file, please contact
** Nokia at [email protected].
** $QT_END_LICENSE$
**
****************************************************************************/

//
//  W A R N I N G
//  -------------
//
// This file is not part of the Qt API.  It exists purely as an
// implementation detail.  This header file may change from version to
// version without notice, or even be removed.
//
// We mean it.

/**
 * @file
 * @short Contains Doxygen documentation for groups.
 */

namespace QPatternist
{
    /**
     * @short The abstract syntax tree nodes that implements the builtin
     * functions, such as @c fn:concat().
     *
     * @defgroup Patternist_functions Function Implementations
     * @author Frans Englich <[email protected]>
     */

    /**
     * @short The abstract syntax tree nodes that is generated for XPath,
     * XQuery, and XSL-T code.
     *
     * XPath's approach of compilation is traditional. An Abstract Syntax
     * Tree(AST) is built, where the Expression class is the abstract base
     * class for all kinds of implementations of expressions.
     *
     * What perhaps can be said to be characteristic for Patternist is that the
     * base class, Expression, performs a lot of work, and that sub-classes
     * declares what specific behaviors they need, which the Expression's
     * functions then bring into action.
     *
     * XPath expressions often have different amount of operands. For example,
     * the 'and' expression takes two, the context item(".") none, and the
     * if-expression three. To help expression implementations with that, there
     * exist the abstract EmptyContainer, SingleContainer, PairContainer,
     * TripleContainer, and UnlimitedContainer classes for avoiding duplicating
     * code.
     *
     * @defgroup Patternist_expressions Expressions
     * @author Frans Englich <[email protected]>
     */

    /**
     * @short Various classes that contains small utility functions.
     *
     * @defgroup Patternist Utility Classes
     * @author Frans Englich <[email protected]>
     */

    /**
     * @short Classes for the type system in the XQuery & XSL-T language.
     *
     * @defgroup Patternist_types Type system
     * @author Frans Englich <[email protected]>
     */

    /**
     * @defgroup Patternist_xdm XQuery/XPath Data Model
     * @author Frans Englich <[email protected]>
     */

    /**
     * @short Patternist's family of iterators in one of the most central parts
     * of Patternist's API, and are responsible for carrying, and typically
     * also creating, data.
     *
     * An iterator, which always is an Iterator sub-class, is similar to a
     * Java-style iterator. What signifies Patternist's iterators is that they
     * almost always contains business logic(which is the cause to their
     * efficiency).
     *
     * An example which illustrates this principle is the RangeIterator. When
     * the RangeExpression is told to create a sequence of integers between 1
     * and 1000, it doesn't enter a loop that allocates 1000 Integer instances,
     * but instead return an RangeIterator that incrementally creates the
     * numbers when asked to do so via its RangeIterator::next() function. If
     * it turns out that the expression that has the range expression as
     * operand only needs three items from it, that is what gets created, not
     * 1000.
     *
     * All iterators operates by that principle, perhaps suitably labeled as
     * "pull-based", "lazy loaded" or "serialized". Central for the XPath
     * language is that it filters and selects data, and the iterators supports
     * this well by letting the demand of the filter expressions(the callees)
     * decide how "much" source that gets computed. In this way the evaluation
     * of an expression tree can lead to a chain of pipelined iterators, where
     * the first asks the second for data and then performs its specific
     * operations, the second subsequently asks the third, and so forth.
     *
     * However, the iterators are not limited to be used for representing
     * sequences of items in the XPath Data Model. The Iterator is
     * parameterized on one argument, meaning any type of "units" can be
     * iterated, be it Item or any other. One use of this is in the
     * ExpressionSequence(which implements the comma operator) where it creates
     * Iterator instances over Expression instances -- its operands. The
     * parameterization is often used in combination with the MappingIterator
     * and the MappingCallback.
     *
     * @defgroup Patternist_iterators Iterators
     * @author Frans Englich <[email protected]>
     */
}