Interface Salient\Contract\Core\Provider\ProviderInterface

Get the name of the provider

Appropriate values to return are:

• already in scope (no lookup or transformation required)
• likely to be unique
• human-readable

Get a stable list of values that, together with its class name, uniquely identifies the provider's backend instance

This method must be idempotent for each backend instance the provider connects to. The return value should correspond to the smallest possible set of stable metadata that uniquely identifies the specific data source backing the connected instance.

This may include:

• an endpoint URI (if backend instances are URI-specific or can be expressed as an immutable URI)
• a tenant ID
• an installation GUID

It should not include:

• usernames, API keys, tokens, or other identifiers with a shorter lifespan than the data source itself
• values that aren't unique to the connected data source
• case-insensitive values (unless normalised first)

It must not include:

• values retrieved from a provider at runtime

Get a date formatter to work with the backend's date and time format and/or timezone

Get a context within which to instantiate entities on the provider's behalf

Throw an exception if the backend isn't reachable

Positive results should be cached for $ttl seconds. Negative results must never be cached.