Term: Probe
A Java class that conforms to a certain API and knows how to access and parse a data source outside of InfoGrid, such as an RSS feed or web service API. The InfoGrid Probe Framework supports an arbitrary large number of Probe classes which may support any kind of standard or proprietary data feed.
A Probe may be read-only or read-write, in which case it is called WritableProbe.
Probes may be one of:
- ApiProbe: the Probe accesses an API or web service
- XmlDOMProbe: InfoGrid pre-parses an XML feed into a DOM, which is then passed to the Probe
- NonXmlStreamProbe: a raw InputStream
A ProbeDirectory maps MIME types, XML document types and URLs to the correct Probe class for an application.
A Probe is updated according to its ProbeUpdateSpecification.
See also:
