Coming soon to OSGi - Standard framework launching and composite bundles!

Thomas Watson (IBM), Richard S. Hall

Supporting Technology - OSGi DevCon · Long - one hour
Wednesday, 15:30, 50 minutes | Room 206

Richard S. Hall

The next OSGi specification (R4.2) introduces several new features to the core framework specification. In this talk the lead developers of two prominent open source OSGi framework implementations will join forces to discuss what is coming. Richard Hall is the chair of the Apache Felix project and Tom Watson is the lead developer of the Eclipse Equinox framework. Together they will explain two key new features coming to the OSGi Framework specification.

The OSGi framework provides a powerful runtime for the Java platform, which promotes strong modularity, versioning and dynamic management of applications. Until now there has not been a standard way to launch and control a framework instance. The R4.2 specification introduces a standard way for configuring and constructing a new framework instance. Once created, it is possible to start and stop the framework instance as well as provision it with an initial set of bundles.

The R4.2 specification also introduces a standard way to create and manage child framework instances. In this talk we will discuss how child frameworks can be used to create composite bundles. Composite bundles are similar to other bundles installed into an OSGi framework in that they can import/export packages and consume/publish services. The key difference is the content of a composite bundle is provided by a set of bundles installed and running in a child framework. Composite bundles support a two-way relationship between the parent and child framework instances, where packages and services are shared from the parent to the child framework and vice versa.

During this talk we will demonstrate a simple launcher using a standard API to launch both the Equinox and Felix frameworks. We will also demonstrate composite bundles running on an OSGi R4.2 framework implementation.

Tom co-leads the Equinox Project at Eclipse. Thomas has 10 years of experience as an IBM software architect and developer, and is currently working for IBM Lotus. Tom's focus is on modularity and the OSGi Framework design and development. He is the lead developer for the Equinox OSGi Framework implementation in Eclipse. He participants in the OSGi specification process. In particular, he participates in the Core Platform Export Group at the OSGi Alliance and is currently working on the next OSGi specification (R4.2). He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Texas El Paso.

Richard is the OSGi dude for the GlassFish team at Sun Microsystems. He has been working with OSGi technology since 2000 and has been participating in the OSGi Alliance since 2004. He is the chair of the Apache Felix project and is interested in component and service orientation for the purposes of dynamically assembling applications. Richard received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder focusing on the area of software deployment.