OSGi Remote Services and ECF

Introduction

OSGi Enterprise specification provides a new standard for service-oriented architecture (SOA). This standard uses the well-established OSGi service registry to export services for out-of-process access...i.e. OSGi services are distributed via a network rather than only available to the single OSGi process.

ECF's support for this standard is implemented as a layered set of application programming interfaces (APIs). The modular structure allows service builders and service consumers to use an 'ala carte' model for defining, creating, deploying, integrating, running and managing distributed services. Such an 'ala carte' model is helpful for implementing distributed applications for two at least reasons:

1. It reduces overall system complexity by promoting loose coupling and high cohesion via OSGi Services. Distributed applications can easily become complicated and difficult to manage, version, and maintain. The use of OSGi Remote Services to create a formal separation between contract/service type and implementation makes system complexity much easier to understand and manage.
2. It provides flexibility. Networked applications frequently require a good deal of flexibility...i.e. the flexibility to replace one transport with another, one security model for another, one deployment and management approach with another, synchronous RPC with asynchronous messaging. The flexibility of using OSGi modularity and ECF allows service developers and consumers to mix-and-match transport protocols and serialization formats, supports interoperability and integration with existing systems, and supports use of synchronous and/or asynchronous invocation patterns as needed.

Here are several tutorials showing how standardized Remote Services can be used with ECF's implementation.

Related Documentation

Getting Started with ECF's OSGi Remote Services Implementation

ECF#Introductory_Materials

ECF API Docs

API Javadocs

Getting Started with Using the ECF Remote Services API

Distributed EventAdmin Service