///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// For information as to what this class does, see the Javadoc, below.       //
// Copyright (C) 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,       //
// 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015 by Peter Spirtes, Richard Scheines, Joseph   //
// Ramsey, and Clark Glymour.                                                //
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// This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify      //
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by      //
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// GNU General Public License for more details.                              //
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// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License         //
// along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software               //
// Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA //
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package edu.cmu.tetrad.util;

import java.io.Serializable;

/**
 * <p>Interface to tag a class that is part of the set of serializable classes
 * in the Tetrad API. These classes must have all of their serialiable fields
 * marked with @serial tags, and they may only have serializable fields that are
 * primitive, TetradSerializable, arrays of some TetradSerializable type,
 * Collection or Map classes, or String or Class fields. They must also have a
 * static final long field called 'serialVerUID' set to 23L. Classes in this set
 * may never change their class name or package path once published, and the
 * type of any serializable member field may never be changed to an incompatible
 * type. (For primitives, change the type at all constitutes an incompatible
 * change.) If these conditions are all met, then Tetrad sessions saved out in
 * one version will load in later versions of Tetrad. They may load with
 * incorrect information if, for instance, the name of a field is changed or the
 * interpretation of that field changes. So in general, when making a class
 * TetradSerializable, please make sure that its member fields all have good
 * names (that you won't want to change later) and all have clear
 * interpretations (that you won't want to change later).</p> <p>If that all
 * sounds like a pain, the payoff is that even very large Tetrad sessions will
 * load quickly. This isn't currently true, from what I can tell, for any XML
 * renderer/parser on the market. If a Tetrad session contains a dataset with 50
 * and 5000 cases, for instance, binary serialization will load it in well under
 * a second, whereas XML parsers that I've checked don't come back in under 5
 * minutes.</p> <p>The test class that checks the above conditions are
 * TestSerialization, which in turn uses methods in TetradSerializableUtils.
 * More details can be find there.</p>
 * <p>
 * <p>See TestSerialization and TestSerializiableUtils.</p>
 *
 * @author Joseph Ramsey
 */
public interface TetradSerializable extends Serializable {
}





