OSGi and Equinox: Creating Highly Modular Java Systems [Paperback]

Jeff McAffer (Author), Paul VanderLei (Author), Simon Archer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321585712 | ISBN-13: 978-0321585714 | Publication Date: February 24, 2010 | Edition: 1

A Hands-On Guide to Equinox and the OSGi Framework

 In OSGI and Equinox: Creating Highly Modular Java™ Systems, three leading experts show developers--for the first time--exactly how to make the most of these breakthrough technologies for building highly modular dynamic systems.


You'll quickly get started with Eclipse bundle tooling, create your first OSGi-based system, and move rapidly to sophisticated production development. Next, you'll master best practices and techniques for creating systems with exceptional modularity and maintainability. You'll learn all about OSGi's Declarative Services and how to use them to solve a wide variety of real-world problems. Finally, you'll see everything that you've learned implemented in a complete case study project that takes you from early prototype through application delivery.
For every Eclipse developer, regardless of previous experience, this book

• Combines a complete hands-on tutorial, online sample code at every step, and deep technical dives for working developers
• Covers the OSGi programming model, component development, OSGi services, Eclipse bundle tooling, server-side Equinox, and much more
• Offers knowledge, guidance, and best practices for overcoming the complexities of building modular systems
• Addresses practical issues ranging from integrating third-party code libraries to server-side programming
• Includes a comprehensive case study that goes beyond prototyping to deliver a fully refined
  and refactored production system

Whatever your application, industry, or problem domain, if you want to build state-of-the-art software systems with OSGi and Equinox, you will find this book to be an essential resource.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeff McAffer co-leads the Eclipse RCP and Equinox OSGi projects, and is CTO and co-founder of EclipseSource. He is one of the architects of the Eclipse Platform and a coauthor of The Eclipse Rich Client Platform (Addison-Wesley) and OSGi and Equinox (Addison-Wesley). He co-leads the RT PMC and is a member of the Eclipse Project PMC, the Tools Project PMC and the Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors and the Eclipse Architecture Council. Jeff is currently interested all aspects of Eclipse components, from developing and building bundles to deploying, installing and ultimately running them. Previous lives include being a Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM, a team lead at Object Technology International covering work in Smalltalk, distributed/parallel OO computing, expert systems, meta-level architectures and a Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo.

Paul VanderLei is a partner at Band XI International. He has more than 25 years of software engineering experience with an emphasis on object-oriented design and Agile practices. He is well-known for his innovative, yet straightforward, engineering solutions to complex problems. After earning his M.S. in Computer Science from Arizona State University, he joined Object Technology International and worked on a wide range of Smalltalk-based systems. After OTI’s acquisition by IBM, Paul gained more than 10 years of experience developing embedded Java applications and user interfaces for the automotive and medical industry as a founding member of the IBM Embedded Java Enablement Team. He has been using OSGi in commercial applications since 2000 and is a coauthor of OSGi and Equinox (Addison-Wesley), a book on the proper construction of Java applications using OSGi. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his wife and four children.

Simon Archer has more than 16 years of software engineering experience with an emphasis on object-oriented design, Agile practices, and software quality. After earning his B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Portsmouth, UK, he worked as a Smalltalk developer at Knowledge System Corporation and later at Object Technology International, which was later acquired by IBM. While at OTI in 2000, Simon began working with and teaching OSGi in areas such as telematics and RFID. Today he works for IBM Rational using OSGi to build collaborative development tools for the Jazz Foundation project.

Product Details

• Paperback: 460 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (February 24, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321585712
• ISBN-13: 978-0321585714
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #362,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book. Good reference for OSGi best practices., June 26, 2010

By 

Daniel Ford (New York USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: OSGi and Equinox: Creating Highly Modular Java Systems (Paperback)

Summary: This is a well executed and detailed explanation of how to develop modular Java systems and applications using OSGi and Equinox. It uses the development of an easy to follow example application, called Toast, as the vehicle to explain OSGi theory and practice using Equninox. One of the main themes of the book is the whys and hows of OSGi Declarative Services. In general, it is a good book for OSGi beginners, but familiarity with Eclipse is a perquisite. Advanced developers will find it to be a good resource and example of OSGi best practices.

The writing was clear and well edited; you could tell that it had been through many revisions to get it to its current polished state. The step-by-step instructions for the examples was at the right level for me, with enough detail to get things to work without being overly long. For instance, I find that I quickly get the concept of the example, but then I like to be given the details of what to name things and exactly what else to do, so that I can concentrate on the example and keep things moving along.

Another bonus that comes with the book is an Eclipse plug-in that can be installed from the web which includes the source code of all of the examples organized by chapter. It manifests itself as a special view in Eclipse that lists all of the example code. One can use this view to populate the workspace with the example code from any chapter, or, to compare the current workspace contents to the book's example. I found this last feature to be a great help as there were several times where things were not working and I was stuck for a solution. By simply comparing my manually entered version of the example code with the chapter's reference version, I quickly found the small differences that were causing problems and was quickly on my way. This ability is the next best thing to having the authors look over your shoulder and tell you what you did wrong.

I did run into a few issues with the book. There were several times where the steps provided to produce the example code were not complete. These were minor things like a missing dependency specification or in one case a default value produced by a wizard that needed to be explicitly set to something else. Mostly, these were no problem to correct.

Basically, I wasn't disappointed, this is a good book that delivers on what it promises.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely a GEM, April 3, 2010

By 

Okur Yazar "Yengec" (Istanbul, Turkey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: OSGi and Equinox: Creating Highly Modular Java Systems (Paperback)

I've never learned starting with a wizard-generated code and then trying to decipher what it does with the help of authors explainations on that code. Many authors may still believe that, this is the right and concrete way, but it never worked for me. I'm theory oriented. I must have a goal at very early stages, and I want to know answers of all my WHY-questions. Otherwise I'll give up. Actually, I want to write (not to generate) code and have full control on it. Tools are there to easily modify and manage the code, if and only if I completely know and understand the purpose. This book DOES NOT start with wizard code. Further it chooses a very smart starting point. Very likely, a programmer started his eclipse plug-in and RCP adventure as being an eclipse JDT user. Thus, he knows programming java and uses eclipse as IDE, he deploys his applications in jar's etc... And this book takes you to the journey exactly at this point. It starts with ordinary java classes, and converts them to plug-ins and step by step ports this very simple code to a component based profi application.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars detailed tutorial for OSGi/Equinox, April 11, 2010

By 

Jeanne Boyarsky (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: OSGi and Equinox: Creating Highly Modular Java Systems (Paperback)

"OSGi and Equinox"is the first "Eclipse Series" book I have read. It has three parts.

The first part is an introduction. The brief history shows how OSGI came to be and the benefits. It had excellent visuals to see the concepts being presented.

The second part is an extended tutorial to create the TOAST application from scratch. The tutorial assumes you've never used Eclipse before so it was a bit slow to get started. I would have liked seeing how to create a project/class as an appendix. There were a ton of IDE screenshots so I certainly felt like I was doing the tutorial with the author. That style got a little dry/repetitive; maybe because I wasn't following along on a computer. Many concepts were covered and there were good tips and warnings to the reader. I was a bit puzzled why the tests are using easyMock with Java 5 and Junit 4. I'll be sure to ask the author when he is at JavaRanch the week of April 20th.

The third part is "deep dives" into specific concepts. This section was less tutorial-y and I liked it better. It includes patterns, the lifecycle and crosscutting concerns. There is also an "other"/kitchen sink chapter that contains numerous tips and tracks.

Overall, I did learn a lot from the book. If you are looking to learn OSGi/Equinox, I think it is good to read.