/*
 * Copyright 2005-2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
 * DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.
 *
 * This code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
 * under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as
 * published by the Free Software Foundation.  Sun designates this
 * particular file as subject to the "Classpath" exception as provided
 * by Sun in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code.
 *
 * This code 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
 * version 2 for more details (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that
 * accompanied this code).
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License version
 * 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
 * Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
 *
 * Please contact Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara,
 * CA 95054 USA or visit www.sun.com if you need additional information or
 * have any questions.
 */

package com.sun.xml.internal.ws.api.server;

import com.sun.xml.internal.ws.api.message.Packet;
import com.sun.xml.internal.ws.api.server.WSEndpoint.PipeHead;

/**
 * Represents a transport back-channel.
 *
 * <p>
 * When the JAX-WS runtime finds out that the request
 * {@link Packet} being processed is known not to produce
 * a response, it invokes the {@link #close()} method
 * to indicate that the transport does not need to keep
 * the channel for the response message open.
 *
 * <p>
 * This allows the transport to close down the communication
 * channel sooner than wainting for
 * {@link PipeHead#process}
 * method to return, thereby improving the overall throughput
 * of the system.
 *
 * @author Kohsuke Kawaguchi
 * @author Jitu
 */
public interface TransportBackChannel {
    /**
     * See the class javadoc for the discussion.
     *
     * <p>
     * JAX-WS is not guaranteed to call this method for all
     * operations that do not have a response. This is merely
     * a hint.
     *
     * <p>
     * When the implementation of this method fails to close
     * the connection successfuly, it should record the error,
     * and return normally. Do not throw any exception.
     */
    void close();
}