Re: The world is full of containers and service frameworks

On Nov 7, 2003, at 10:39 AM, Ojares Rami EINT wrote:
> Now I tried to get an update on this issue and realized that there
> are now so many of competing implementations and specifications
> (phoenix (not active), merlin (not very mature), Loom (seems like
> continuation of phoenix & pico), spring, hivemind...)

Loom is a continuation of Phoenix. Basically the unreleased 4.1 branch. 
The Avalon project has decided to stop development on Phoenix and 
concentrate on Merlin, and thus the reason as to why Loom was started.

> Is there a document that would analyze the differences and
> ideologies behind all these different containers/service frameworks?

Picocontainer's website has the best collection of articles and such at 
the moment, I believe.. <http://picocontainer.org>

A more detailed comparison would be useful, ie which containers are 
embedded only, which are standalone, etc.

> If not could someone at least comment on the differences between
> loom & merlin.

Unfortunately that's a loaded issue due to the politics that involved 
Loom forking Phoenix from Avalon. Thus most of us here would likely be 
hard-pressed to not be biased in some way in favor of Loom :)

  * Loom continues on Phoenix, which has been around considerably longer 
than Merlin, and has far more production experience. (Not to say that 
Merlin isn't capable, just that it hasn't been as battle-tested as 
much)
  * Loom's logging configuration is more expressive.
  * Loom has more active developers (but it appears that more people are 
finally joining work on Merlin)
  * Loom has JMX management capabilities
  * Loom supports per-application security policies
  * Merlin supports embedding and nest containers easily (planned for 
Loom)
  * Merlin can leverage a Maven-style repository for loading jar 
dependencies (similar feature is coming to Loom)

.. others can add to this, but its a start.
-pete