Sam, I am at a loss for words...
It's clear that I am not able to ask for help in understanding the benefits that
you see, or perhaps you can't relate them to me. I'm just looking for your
experiences and the values you see. I know what OSGi says it is. I know how to
read the documentation (again and again) to see what it currently supports in
each new release.
That's not what I am looking for. I'm trying to get first hand reports and
recommendations on what is valuable to those who have used it and deployed
things using it. I want to see which of the possible set of features that Jini
could provide for OSGi inter-working would allow someone to get some benefits.
For example, preferred class loading solves some class loading issues. But, if
some parts of OSGi have removed those benefits from your view and you don't need
them any longer, I'd like to know more about that.
Do you just like OSGi because it's a container that you drop things into and
they work?
I want to know the details of your experiences please.
Gregg Wonderly
Sam Chance wrote:
Gregg,
It is not my desire or intention to try to play "technology ping-pong." I'm
only introducing another viewpoint. Frankly, I don't have time to read
long, verbose emails. I've touted enough OSGi technology attributes to
intrigue those who might be interested in learning more. The answers to
your questions can be found on the OSGi Alliance's web site - and I promise
you there are solid answers. Additionally, a number of books that provide
ample OSGi coverage are either recently published or nearing publication.
Oracle, Sun, IBM, SpringSource, JBoss, Progress, Paremus, ProSyst and others
offer a lot of informative OSGi literature as well. Neal Bartlett also
provides a lot of OSGi resources. Eclipse [Equinox] and Apache Felix are
great places as well.
Happy Learning! :-)
Sam
On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 6:49 PM, Gregg Wonderly <[email protected]> wrote:
Sam Chance wrote:
In fact, OSGi does help a lot with "Classpath Hell".
I didn't see a reply from my earlier request for more information on the
issues that the OSGi experienced think OSGi helps the most with regarding
this issue. I'd really like to see what issues you all have had and that
OSGi has addressed.
Is it just that packaging encloses the set of things you need to make
things work and you don't have to worry about that, or is it something else?
Many containers use ClassLoader hierarchies of various shapes to isolate
and "interrelate" different types of package structures. I'm just
interested in knowing more about the issues and benefits you all recognize
from your experiences.
OSGi also adds another layer of security above the standard Java.
What do you feel is important about this? Authentication vs Authorization
issues would be great to have your opinions and experience on.
Versioning is a "first-class function" in OSGi.
This is a big deal for separating old and new. I think we have a good bit
of this in the PreferredClass mechanisms in Jini 2.x so that implementations
can be forced into use for bug fixing and interfacing with different
versions of difference services. Is there anything else beside classloader
based separation that you all find important in what OSGi provides?
Gregg Wonderly
