/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license
 * agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding
 * copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache 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.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-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.apache.geode.internal.cache;


/**
 * A factory that produces RegionEntry instances.
 *
 * @since GemFire 3.5.1
 *
 *
 */
public interface RegionEntryFactory {
  /**
   * Creates an instance of RegionEntry.
   * 
   * @return the created entry
   */
  public RegionEntry createEntry(RegionEntryContext context, Object key, Object value);

  /**
   * @return the Class that each entry, of this factory, is an instance of
   */
  public Class getEntryClass();

  /**
   * @return return the versioned equivalent of this RegionEntryFactory
   */
  public RegionEntryFactory makeVersioned();

  /**
   * Return the equivalent on heap version of this entry factory. This is used for creating
   * temporary region entries that shouldn't be stored off heap.
   */
  public RegionEntryFactory makeOnHeap();
}
