Something I’ve been researching lately is the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) framework- a java module system. I think it probably holds some promise as a viable technology, although I remain agnostic due to my lack of “real world” experience. Regardless, at some point most java developers will be exposed to OSGi in one way or another. More than a few industry heavyhitters are adopting it. Heavyhitters like Eclipse, BEA Weblogic, IBM, JBoss, and Oracle. It may even become part of Java 7 if JSR 277 is adopted.
Here’s some links:
The OSGi Alliance
Neil Bartlett’s Getting Started with OSGi tutorial is a good place to start. (He’s also started a free book that’s worth checking out.)
Eclipse’s Equinox – probably the most popular implementation
Felix – Apache’s implementation
Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi
An Introduction to OSGi on the Server Side – article published by BEA Systems Oracle
[…] 22, 2008 by darrylnelson The first post of my blog was about OSGi, a java technology that has gained some traction. As part of my OSGi […]
I’ve always been interested and have enjoyed developing in swing, and in relation to OSGi, I’ve noticed the Netbeans platform for developing rich desktop applications shares some similarities with OSGi;
“Modularity
Applications based on the NetBeans Platform can load modules dynamically, so you no longer need to download the entire application to get an upgrade or a new release.
Instead of writing the same code over and over again, you can even assemble an application from already existing modules and benefit from work contributed by others. There are lots of useful open-source modules written by the NetBeans community that are ready to be embedded, such as TaskList, SpellChecker, etc.”
More at http://www.netbeans.org/features/platform/index.html