/*
* RHQ Management Platform
* Copyright (C) 2005-2011 Red Hat, Inc.
* All rights reserved.
*
* 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 version 2 of the License.
*
* 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, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
*/
package org.rhq.enterprise.server.sync.importers;
import org.rhq.core.domain.auth.Subject;
import org.rhq.core.domain.authz.Role;
import org.rhq.enterprise.server.plugin.pc.alert.AlertSender;
/**
* An implementation of this interface is able match instances of given type with some objects
* in the inventory.
* <p>
* This is used during the configuration synchronization where different types of entities are
* being obtained from the export file and it is necessary to find matches of them in the database
* that is being imported to.
* <p>
* There is a default set of matchers defined in the server for basic types of entitites like {@link Subject}s,
* {@link Role}s, etc. but different export/import participants (like the {@link AlertSender alert senders}) can
* contribute new types of matchers for the data that they are exporting.
*
* @author Lukas Krejci
*/
public interface ExportedEntityMatcher<Entity, ExportedType> {
/**
* Tries to find a match for given object in the data available in the database.
* The returned object is not necessarily of the same type is the provided object
* because the given object might function as some kind of "proxy" object that represents
* the data better in the sync scenarios.
*
* @param object
* @return
*/
Entity findMatch(ExportedType object);
}