Thought a bit more about it and we can use the ofbiz-componet.xml as it
is similar to the plugin.xml of Eclipse. I will work on a prototype to
evaluate it.
Thanks,
Raj
Raj Saini wrote:
Hi David,
I see it at both levels but in a phased manner. In the first phase, we
can use the OSGi to manage the run time and component code and leave
let OFBiz containers and load using OFBiz component model. This is the
part my prototype addresses and can help us creating binary releases.
I have not thought much about the how to replace the OFbiz component
model with the OSGi one. However, I see no reason it cant be done
using the standard MANIFEST files of OFBiz. We would need to extend
the OSGi (creating one bundle to handle this stuff) similar to the way
Spring and Eclipse do.
Thanks,
Raj
David E Jones wrote:
I like many of the ideas about OSGi (even if it isn't quite what some
people think it is).
>From your point of view, how specifically do you see OSGi used in
OFBiz? Are you thinking it could replace the OFBiz component
functionality or just be used to deploy java code arbitrarily at
run-time?
If you are thinking it could be used to replace the OFBiz component
stuff, how would you handle each part of the ofbiz-component.xml file
(especially the non-classpath parts)?
I've looked into it, but not enough to get past that, so any thoughts
you (or anyone else) has would be interesting.
-David
On Mar 12, 2010, at 1:53 AM, Raj Saini wrote:
Hi David,
One thing could be useful in the long run is moving to OSGi based
components. There are numerous benefits of OSGi and you can find a a
lot about it on the net. The kind of modularity OSGi brings is not
possible in other components modules. Dynamic bundle loading and
unloading is useful during development and run time. During
development, for example if you have changed some Java code in one
of the bundle, you do not need to restart the complete server to
load the new code. Just update or stop/start the bundle and you are
ready to test. One more advantage I see is exporting OFBiz services
as web services or distributed OSGi services. Eclipse ECF and Apache
CXF provide distributed OSGi implementation. Integration with other
applications such as ServiceMix should also be very easier as they
are already run on OSGi platform.
Thanks,
Raj
I recently completed a prototype to run the OFBiz framework embedded
in the Equinox OSGi runtime and it worked fine with little changes
here and there.
David E Jones wrote:
If you could change anything about the OFBiz framework (not related
to a specific tier), what would it be? This could be about how
OFBiz is deployed, how the tools fit together, how application
components are written and organized, and so on.
All comments are welcome. If there is another tool you'd like to
see used, please describe what you like about it (like "I've found
the aspect oriented inversion of control approach nice because I
can plugin all sorts of tools and the full life cycle of the tools
are managed for me") instead of just mentioning the tool (like
"let's use Spring!").
Why am I asking? This topic comes up every once in a while, and
it's true that many suggestions never get enough support to
actually happen (or on further research it is decided that the idea
is not tenable), but brainstorming about them to get ideas in the
open is still a great thing. The history of OFBiz is full of things
like this where users and more casual contributors had ideas and
saw possibilities that others, even more involved contributors,
totally missed or never looked at that way. What I think would be
fun, and ultimately useful too, is to keep this mostly to
brainstorming and not do too much comparing of ideas.
BTW, if you want to brainstorm about one of the tiers (ie the Data,
Logic, or UI tiers) please use the other threads on those.
-David
