IGroupMember defines common behavior for both the leaf IEntity and composite IEntityGroup sub-types that together make up a Groups structure. An IGroupMember can answer both its parents and its children but has no api for adding or removing them. These methods are defined on the composite type, IEntityGroup, since you add a member to a group, and not vice versa.
Because it extends IBasicEntity, an IGroupMember has an EntityIdentifier that can be used to cache and lock it. A leaf IGroupMember also has a separate EntityIdentifier for its underlying entity. This second EntityIdentifier is used to create and record group memberships. In the case of a composite (non-leaf) IGroupMember, both EntityIdentifiers are the same.
Take care to implement equals() and hashCode() so that duplicates returned from "deep" methods can be recognized.
@author Dan Ellentuck
@version $Revision: 19776 $
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