/**

  * Copyright 2005-2011 The Kuali 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/ecl2.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.ksb.api.registry;

 import org.kuali.rice.core.api.mo.common.Versioned;

 import org.kuali.rice.ksb.api.bus.ServiceConfiguration;

 /**

  * A service descriptor includes a serialized XML representation of the

  * {@link ServiceConfiguration} for the service.

  * 

  * <p>It's expected that a client of this service which needs this information

  * will materialize this value when it's needed to obtain additional

  * information about the configuration information for the service.  The

  * process for materializing the information can be dependent upon the

  * type of the {@link ServiceInfo} which contains this descriptor. 

  * 

  * <p>The separation of this descriptor information from the main

  * {@link ServiceInfo} allows for clients of the registry to only load the

  * basic information about the services in the registry, and then pull in the

  * full descriptor for the services they actually need to invoke and work with. 

  *

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

  *

  */

 public interface ServiceDescriptorContract extends Versioned {

         /**

          * Returns the id of this service descriptor.  This value should be unique

          * across service descriptors.  This value is generated when the service

          * is published to the registry, so this value can be null if the service

          * has not yet been published to the registry.

          * 

          * @return the id of this service descriptor, or null if the service and

          * it's descriptor has not yet been published to the registry

          */

         String getId();

         /**

          * Returns an XML value which can be used to materialize the {@link ServiceConfiguration}

          * for the service.

          * 

          * @return the XML representation of the {@link ServiceConfiguration} for the service,

          * should never return a null or blank value

          */

         String getDescriptor();

 }