3.6.1 Protocols are produced and consumed

Protocols enable inter-module communication in UEFI. To enable this communication, one of the modules must create or "produce" the protocol. Other modules (including drivers) may then use or "consume" the protocol.

Drivers are both consumers and producers of protocols. For example, a UEFI Driver for a SCSI Host Controller on a PCI bus consumes the PCI I/O Protocol and produces the SCSI Host Controller Protocols.

The initial producer of the protocol must "create" the protocol. The protocol structure must be allocated from memory (allocated either statically in the program or via a memory allocation operation). The protocol must then be initialized by filling in its contents. This almost always involves filling in the function pointers declared in the protocol structure. In other words, to produce a protocol is to declare its functionality and publish that functionality to the handle database (so other drivers can find and use that declaration).

Although it is legal to store data in a protocol, this is strongly discouraged for data items that may change over time. It is not a safe way to store dynamic data. Instead, functions that provide get/set operations (as in object-oriented programming) are safer and more extensible. The producer then uses InstallMultipleProtocolInterfaces() (as defined in the Boot Service chapter of the UEFI Specification) or similar to install the protocol into the handle database and make the protocol available to others.

The consumer has a somewhat simpler task. The consumer looks up the protocol in the handle database by GUID. With service protocols, for which there is only one instance in the entire handle database, the consumer can use the LocateProtocol() service. For protocols that may be present on multiple handles in the handle database, the LocateHandleBuffer() service can be used to locate the set of handles that support a specified protocol. The consumer can then use the OpenProtocol() service to lookup a protocol on a specific handle.

It is possible that the consumer is invoked before the producer. In this case, the consumer can request it be notified when new instances of the protocol are created. This is accomplished using the RegisterProtocolNotify() service.

Any UEFI image can use protocols during boot time. However, after ExitBootServices() is called, the handle database is no longer available to the image.

A complete description of all the services used to manage the handle database and produce and consume protocols appears in Chapter 5.