--- /dev/null
+/*******************************************************************************
+ * Copyright (c) 2012 Association for Decentralized Information Management
+ * in Industry THTH ry.
+ * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
+ * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
+ * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
+ * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
+ *
+ * Contributors:
+ * VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland - initial API and implementation
+ *******************************************************************************/
+package org.simantics.maps.tile;
+
+import java.awt.Image;
+import java.awt.geom.Rectangle2D;
+import java.net.URI;
+
+import org.simantics.maps.ProvisionException;
+
+/**
+ * @author Tuukka Lehtonen
+ */
+public interface ITileProvider {
+
+ /**
+ * @return an identifier for the tile provider connection. May represent any
+ * protocol, not necessarily a web service at all.
+ */
+ URI getSource();
+
+ /**
+ * @return the bounding box of tiles served by this tile provider in degrees
+ * [(-180,-90) x (180,90)]
+ */
+ Rectangle2D getExtent();
+
+ /**
+ * A synchronous method for requesting the specified map tile as a raster
+ * image.
+ *
+ * @param key the requested tile
+ * @return the tile as an image
+ * @throws ProvisionException if any failure occurs while procuring the
+ * image
+ */
+ Image get(TileKey key) throws ProvisionException;
+
+}