/*

  * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more

  * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with

  * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.

  * The ASF licenses this file to You 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 org.apache.commons.pipeline;

 /**

  * Simple factory interface for creating pipelines. This interface is commonly implemented

  * in different ways to allow creation of a pipeline based upon some external

  * configuration source instead of in code.

  */

 public interface PipelineFactory {

     /**

      * Returns a Pipeline created by the factory.

      * @throws org.apache.commons.pipeline.PipelineCreationException if there is an error creating the pipeline

      * @return the newly created pipeline

      */

     public Pipeline createPipeline() throws PipelineCreationException;

 }