----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason van Zyl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 9:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Question] Lightweight Service Framewok, where does it fit ?
> Vincent Massol wrote:
> >
> > I have developed for my own needs a simple Service Framework that I
reused
> > over and over on all my projects. It is completely generic and does not
> > depend on any technology (EJB, Servlets, ...). There is a Service
manager
> > that handles :
> > - services initializations with handling of dependencies and version
> > checking,
> > - service shutdown
> > - retrieval of service by name
> > - possibility to define in a fine grain fashion which services to use
for a
> > given application
> > There also some interfaces like a Service interface for implementing a
> > service and a Reconfigurable interface that services that can be
> > reconfigured at runtime should implement. This is what I call the core.
> >
> > Then I have some standard services :
> > - logging (a wrapper around Log4j),
> > - configuration : it is a service that reads properties file with the
> > advantage of being able to read properties files located in other jars
and
> > it is reconfigurable
> > - XML mapping (a wrapper around Castor XML),
> > - JNDI Wrapper (a simple wrapper around standard JNDI calls)
> > - JDBC Wrapper (a simple wrapper around standard JDBC calls - quite
useful
> > for example for not forgetting to close a JDBC connection, ...)
> >
> > I also have a few more "exotic" services :
> > - Tibco wrapper : for sending a TIBCO message
> > - ...
> >
> > So it is not really a component. It looks a bit like Avalon I think but
I am
> > not sure. What I like is that it is really generic and not tied to any
> > context (Servlet, ...). If you look at Turbine for example, it provides
some
> > of these services but it is tied to the Servlet context. For Avalon, I
am
> > not sure.
>
> In Turbine we are moving toward getting rid of this dependency. There
> is still a lot of work to be done but I think it will happen eventually.
> We have a plan in the turbine 2.2 proposal to get rid of application
> specific dependencies that doesn't look like it will be too hard
> to implement.
>
That's good news. I remember, before writing this service framework I was
looking for an existing one in order not to reinvent the wheel. I found
Turbine and tried to use it but it was too linked to the Servlet context and
linked to other features like user authentication, ... which I absolutely
had no use for it ... I tried to separate it from the Servlet context but
that was too big a task (there was RunData class - if I remember correctly -
that was passed around everywhere). So I wrote my Babel framework ...
> But I would love to see the code for your framework, can you put it in
> the sandbox?
>
It is being put on SourceForge : http://sourceforge.net/projects/babel
(there isn't much currently but the port will be finished within a month).
> >
> > Q1 - Is there any framework that already does this in the jakarta land ?
>
> Avalon is doing it, and Turbine to a large extent. Right now in Turbine
> there
> are some ties to the servlet environment but I don't think it will be
> hard to break.
>
Can you explain to me what will be the future directions of both Avalon and
Turbine. Are they going to integrate together ? It seems there will be lots
of overlap ?
> > Q2 - Is there any need for this kind of lightweight framework ? What I
liked
> > is that when you use a raw framework like Log4j or another, you actually
> > have quite a lot of ways to use it : several ways to do intialization
> > several ways to define what a category is, ... So there is a cost
associated
> > with using a "raw" framework. This service framework lowersa bit this
cost
> > and provides a consistency in using services.
> >
> > Thanks.
> > Vincent Massol.
> >
> > FYI, some of my workmates are actually porting this framework to
opensource
> > on SourceForge. The name is Babel and URL is :
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/babel (there isn't much currently but
the
> > port will be finished within a month).
>
> --
> jvz.
>
> Jason van Zyl
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thanks
Vincent Massol
