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/**
 * $Id$
 * $URL$
 * 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:
 1) Implement this interface
 2) Implement any additional capabilities
 * interfaces (optional, but it would be crazy not to do at least one)
 3) Create a spring bean
 * definition in the Sakai application context (components.xml)
 4) Implement
 * {@link AutoRegisterEntityProvider} or register this implementation some other way
 * 
 * @author Aaron Zeckoski ([email protected])
 * @author Antranig Basman ([email protected])
 */
public interface EntityProvider {

   /**
    * Controls the globally unique prefix for the entities handled by this provider
 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)

    * (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();

}