/*

  *   SONEWS News Server

  *   see AUTHORS for the list of contributors

  *

  *   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, either version 3 of the License, or

  *   (at your option) any later version.

  *

  *   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, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

  */

 package org.sonews.storage;

 /**

  * Provides access to storage backend instances.

  * @author Christian Lins

  * @since sonews/1.0

  */

 public interface StorageProvider

 {

   public boolean isSupported(String uri);

   /**

    * This method returns the reference to the associated storage.

    * The reference MAY be unique for each thread. In any case it MUST be

    * thread-safe to use this method.

    * @return The reference to the associated Storage.

    */

   public Storage storage(Thread thread)

     throws StorageBackendException;

 }