/******************************************************************************
 *  Copyright 2015 by OLTPBenchmark Project                                   *
 *                                                                            *
 *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");           *
 *  you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.          *
 *  You may obtain a copy of the License at                                   *
 *                                                                            *
 *    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0                              *
 *                                                                            *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software       *
 *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,         *
 *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.  *
 *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and       *
 *  limitations under the License.                                            *
 ******************************************************************************/

package com.oltpbenchmark.distributions;
/**                                                                                                                                                                                
 * Copyright (c) 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.                                                                                                                             
 *                                                                                                                                                                                 
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you                                                                                                             
 * may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You                                                                                                                
 * may obtain a copy of the License at                                                                                                                                             
 *                                                                                                                                                                                 
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0                                                                                                                                      
 *                                                                                                                                                                                 
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software                                                                                                             
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,                                                                                                               
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or                                                                                                                 
 * implied. See the License for the specific language governing                                                                                                                    
 * permissions and limitations under the License. See accompanying                                                                                                                 
 * LICENSE file.                                                                                                                                                                   
 */

/**
 * An expression that generates a sequence of string values, following some distribution (Uniform, Zipfian, Sequential, etc.)
 */
public abstract class Generator 
{
	/**
	 * Generate the next string in the distribution.
	 */
	public abstract String nextString();

	/**
	 * Return the previous string generated by the distribution; e.g., returned from the last nextString() call. 
	 * Calling lastString() should not advance the distribution or have any side effects. If nextString() has not yet 
	 * been called, lastString() should return something reasonable.
	 */
	public abstract String lastString();
}

