OSGi

The OSGi Alliance is an open standardization organization formed by Sun Microsystems, International Business Machines, Ericsson and others. Over the past few years it has specified a Java programming language based service platform that can be remotely managed. The core part of the specifications is a framework that defines an application life cycle model and a service registry. Based on this Framework, a large number of OSGi Services have been defined: Log, Configuration Management, Preferences, Http Service (runs servlets), XML parsing, Device Access, Package Admin, Permission Admin, Start Level, User Admin, IO Connector, Wire Admin, Jini, and UPnP.

The Framework implements an elegant, complete, and dynamic component model. Applications (called bundles) can be remotely installed, started, stopped, updated and uninstalled without requiring a reboot (management of Java packages/classes is specified in painstaking detail). Life cycle management is defined in APIs which allows the remote downloading of management policies. The service registry allows bundles to detect new services, or the going away of services, and adapt accordingly.

The original focus was on Service Gateways but the applicability turned out to be much wider. The OSGi specifications are now used from mobile phones to the new version of the open source Eclipse IDE (which now includes an open source compliant version of International Business Machines's Framework called SMF). The application areas of the OSGi Service Platform are: Service gateways, cars, Mobile telephony, industrial automation, building automation, PDAs, grid computing, white goods (e.g. BSH), entertainment (e.g. iPronto), fleet management, and IDEss.

Specifications are developed by the members in an open process and made available to the public free of charge and without licensing conditions. The OSGi Alliance has a compliance program that is open to members only. Currently 12 compliant implementations exist.

Table of contents

1 See also 2 References 3 External links

See also

• JINI
• Universal Plug and Play&trade
• HomePlug
• X-10
• CEBus
• Bluetooth
• Wi-Fi
• LonWorks
• CORBA
• Service Location Protocol
• Salutation

References

• OSGi Service Platform, Release 3, IOS Press, ISBN 1-58603-311-5

External links

• OSGi web site - Information and specification download
• Frequently Asked Questions for Open Services Gateway Initiative
• OSGi World Congress - Upcoming congress in October
• aQute: OSGi Info - Information about OSGi and access to seminars
• OSCAR: Open Source Cluster Application Resources - Open source OSGi implementation (non-compliant)
• Knopflerfish OSGi Open Source OSGi implementation under BSD license
• Oxygen Project