/*

  * Copyright 2011 The Kuali Foundation

  *

  * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 1.0 (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/ecl1.php

  *

  * 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.kuali.rice.core.api.mo;

 import java.util.UUID;

 /**

  * This interface can be used to identify a model object which has a globally unique identifier.

  * This globally unique identifier is referred as the "objectId" of the object.  The means by

  * which it is generated or general format of this value is not specified, however it is

  * intended that some sort of GUID algorithm is used to generate this value, such as the one

  * provided by {@link UUID}.

  * 

  * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)

  *

  */

 public interface GloballyUnique {

         /**

          * Return the globally unique object id of this object.  In general, this value should only

          * be null if the object has not yet been stored to a persistent data store.

          * 

          * @return the objectId of this object, or null if it has not been set yet

          */

         String getObjectId();

 }