/*
 * #%L
 * OME Bio-Formats package for reading and converting biological file formats.
 * %%
 * Copyright (C) 2005 - 2015 Open Microscopy Environment:
 *   - Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin-Madison
 *   - Glencoe Software, Inc.
 *   - University of Dundee
 * %%
 * 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 the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 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 General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public 
 * License along with this program.  If not, see
 * <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html>.
 * #L%
 */

package loci.formats.services;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Vector;

import loci.common.services.Service;

/**
 * Interface defining methods for parsing MDB database files.
 */
public interface MDBService extends Service {

  /**
   * Prepare the given .mdb file for reading.  This method must be called
   * before {@link #parseDatabase()}.
   *
   * @throws IOException if a problem occurs when opening the file
   */
  public void initialize(String filename) throws IOException;

  /**
   * Read all tables from a pre-initialized .mdb files.  Each Vector<String[]>
   * in the outer Vector represents a table; each String[] in a table represents
   * a row, and each element of the String[] represents the value of a
   * particular column within the row.
   *
   * The first row in each table contains the names for each column.
   * The first entry in the column name row is the name of the table.
   *
   * {@link #initialize(String)} must be called before calling parseDatabase().
   *
   * @throws IOException if there is a problem reading the table data
   */
  public Vector<Vector<String[]>> parseDatabase() throws IOException;

  /** Close the currently initialized file. */
  public void close();

}