/**
* $Id: EntityProvider.java 105077 2012-02-24 22:54:29Z ottenhoff@longsight.com $
* $URL: https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/entitybroker/trunk/api/src/java/org/sakaiproject/entitybroker/entityprovider/EntityProvider.java $
* AutoRegister.java - entity-broker - 31 May 2007 7:01:11 PM - azeckoski
**************************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2007, 2008 The Sakai Foundation
*
* Licensed under the Educational Community 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.opensource.org/licenses/ECL-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.sakaiproject.entitybroker.entityprovider;
/**
* Beans may implement this interface directly to provide "extension" capabilities to an existing
* {@link CoreEntityProvider}. If you are the provider for a set of entities then you will want to
* implement {@link CoreEntityProvider}, this interface is primarily for extending an existing
* entity provider (adding extra functionality to one that is already registered
*
* Usage:<br/> 1) Implement this interface<br/> 2) Implement any additional capabilities
* interfaces (optional, but it would be crazy not to do at least one)<br/> 3) Create a spring bean
* definition in the Sakai application context (components.xml)<br/> 4) Implement
* {@link AutoRegisterEntityProvider} or register this implementation some other way
*
* @author Aaron Zeckoski (aaronz@vt.edu)
* @author Antranig Basman (antranig@caret.cam.ac.uk)
*/
public interface EntityProvider {
/**
* Controls the globally unique prefix for the entities handled by this provider<br/> For
* example: Announcements might use "annc", Evaluation might use "eval" (if this is not actually
* unique then an exception will be thrown when Sakai attempts to register this broker)<br/>
* (the global reference string will consist of the entity prefix and the local id)
*
* @return the string that represents the globally unique prefix for an entity type
*/
public String getEntityPrefix();
}