This abstract class defines consumer policy interface. The consumer policy sets the conditions in which some service provider is capable to operate in. It is defining context, through which these (possibly remote) services may be contacted and used. The actual properties may include transport layer settings, like predefined Internet Access Point (IAP) ID. In addition, consumer policy may declare, that certain service should only be contacted using certain identity provider (in ID-WSF). This can be achieved by mapping certain list of IDP IDs to a consumer policy. A consumer policy is effective only for a single session, and thus it applies to one service connection only. This means, that this policy information is "private", and not shared between different WSC applications using WSF, event though they might be using the same (remote) service at the same time. Consumer policy properties are not serialized in any WSF database, but resides in memory only.

Example structure of ConsumerPolicy XML fragment:

<ConsumerPolicy> <Transport> <IapId> 2 </IapId> </Transport> <IdentityProviderIDs strict="false"> <IdentityProviderID> urn:first.example.idp.com </IdentityProviderID> <IdentityProviderID> urn:second.example.idp.com </IdentityProviderID> </IdentityProviderIDs> </ConsumerPolicy>