/*

 *   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;

}