package de.lmu.ifi.dbs.elki.result;

/*
 This file is part of ELKI:
 Environment for Developing KDD-Applications Supported by Index-Structures

 Copyright (C) 2015
 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
 Lehr- und Forschungseinheit für Datenbanksysteme
 ELKI Development Team

 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 (at your option) any later version.

 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
 along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 */

import de.lmu.ifi.dbs.elki.database.ids.ArrayModifiableDBIDs;
import de.lmu.ifi.dbs.elki.database.ids.DBIDs;

/**
 * Interface for a result providing an object ordering.
 * 
 * @author Erich Schubert
 * @since 0.2
 */
public interface OrderingResult extends Result {
  /**
   * Get the full set of DBIDs this ordering is defined for.
   * 
   * @return DBIDs
   */
  public DBIDs getDBIDs();
  
  /**
   * Sort the given ids according to this ordering and return an iterator.
   * 
   * @param ids Collection of ids.
   * @return iterator for sorted array of ids
   */
  public ArrayModifiableDBIDs order(DBIDs ids);
}
