/*
 * 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.distributed;

/**
 * Members of the distributed system can fill one or more user defined roles. A role is metadata
 * that describes how the member relates to other members or what purpose it fills.
 *
 * <a href="DistributedSystem.html#roles">Roles are specified</a> when connecting to the
 * {@link DistributedSystem}.
 *
 * @deprecated this feature is scheduled to be removed
 */
public interface Role extends Comparable<Role> {

  /**
   * Returns the name of this role.
   *
   * @return user-defined string name of this role
   */
  public String getName();

  /**
   * Returns true if this role is currently present in distributed system. If true, then at least
   * one member in the system is configured with this role, regardless of whether or not that member
   * has a cache.
   *
   * @return true if this role is currently present in distributed system
   */
  public boolean isPresent();

  /**
   * Returns the count of members currently filling this role. These members may or may not have a
   * cache.
   *
   * @return number of members in system currently filling this role
   */
  public int getCount();
}
