JavaOne 2007

This year there will be a Best OSGi Practices session at JavaOne.

Abstract

The OSGi specifications have seen widespread adoption in the industry over the last few years. Adoption in enterprise software projects, JSR 232 for the mobile phone industry, the explosion of the number of Eclipse users and programmers, the immense interest in the Spring OSGi project, and the long trail of OSGi use in industrial automation and embedded computing have firmly placed OSGi technology on the map. However, as with any new technology, there is a period in which practitioners struggle with how to best use the technology. Existing patterns clearly work in the OSGi environment, but the best results are achieved when patterns are used that work most effectively on an OSGi platform.

One consideration with OSGi design is how to decompose the system into separate modules called bundles. Although applications can be written as monoliths and deployed as monoliths, more advantages can be obtained when the system is decomposed into smaller, modularized parts. Properly applying this model allows bundles to be reusable, and it allows the reuse of third-party bundles. Also, most systems today contain large chunks of code from previous projects or from external providers. This code will require bundlization to cooperate. This presentation shows you how to bundlize legacy code and warns you about potential pitfalls.

Bundle decomposition is closely related to how to use services. OSGi services provide a service-oriented model for interbundle collaboration and are highly dynamic, with varying cardinalities. The whiteboard pattern is one pattern that is very powerful and related to the inversion of control (IoC) pattern, which is highly popular today. Additional use patterns are also presented.

The session helps practitioners understand the advantages of OSGi technology and properly apply it to their projects. The speakers are people who have been using OSGi since 1998, who have heavily influenced the specification, and would like to share their experiences with you.