Re: Jini vs/and OSGi

I did some work on combining Jini and OSGi.  I was looking at using
Spring as part of the glue, but was advised by yhe OSGi spec group
not to use Spring as the it didn't align well with OSGi and the
config overlap was better dealt within OSGi.  Maybe they have changed
their minds due in part to the success of Spring.

I was using Felix as the OSGi container in hopes that the Jini
codebase would move to Apache, which is still underway.

My thoughts were to steal some of the ServiceUI techniques to provide
ServiceBundles that make it easier to load into an OSGi environment
(and also isolate some of the classloader issues that were present in
the R3 Jini implementation).

In talking to the OSGi folks it was the classloader issues in the R3
Jini connector that posed problems that no one had an itch to fix.
Fair enough.

I'm hoping to restart my Felix / River work as the code starts to
show up on Apache.  Apache is a meritocracy, which comes out more as
a doacracy (if you want it, then do it and get people to join in so
it stays) as one of the examples in the River package, day job
permitting.

Cheers,
Thor HW

On 15-Mar-07, at 4:08 AM, Dan Creswell wrote:

> Adrian wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Would anyone care to comment on where they see things heading with
>> the
>> aforementioned specifications? There seems to be significant
>> functional overlap
>> in current implementations. My impression is that OSGi is gaining
>> a lot of steam
>> (mostly due to the huge success of the Eclipse project, I suppose)
>> and will
>> probably be evolving to offer more and more of what Jini does. While
>> Jini/Javaspaces has also been in the news recently, OSGi seems to
>> be leading in
>> developer/tool maker mindshare and there is a lot of 'real' work
>> done in terms
>> of advancing the spec. This article, written at the end of 2005,
>> http://www.osgi.org/blog/2005/11/why-did-we-let-jini-out-of-osgi-
>> r4.html doesn't
>> doesn't make it sound very promising for Jini (viewed through the
>> subjective
>> eyes of the OSGi Alliance at least). I'm curious why there was no
>> one (I'm
>> thinking GigaSpaces or Dan C., for example) to beat the drums for
>> Jini to be at
>> least kept in the "Recommended" section of the OSGi spec.
>>
>
> Personally, I had no involvement or awareness of what was going
> on.  So
> I couldn't have banged a drum even if I'd wanted to.
>
> I have had feedback since about why's and wherefore's and as it
> happens,
> there's some work to fit Jini's own packaging model into the OSGi
> mould
> which I am aware of.
>
>> Would it make sense to think of a JavaSpace as an OSGi service
>> instead of a Jini
>> one when and if OSGi evolves to provide service lookup across a
>> grid? Are the
>> security/classloader issues mentioned in the article areas that
>> Jini will
>> address in the near term?
>>
>
> Haven't read the article but Jini 2.x has pretty strong security.
> As to
> "fixing classloader issues" can't comment until I see what issues are
> being referred too.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, until very recently the OSGi folks had
> zero
> familiarity with Jini 2.x and work in R3 was all around Jini 1.x which
> was a totally different beast.
>
>> The following presentation talks about using OSGi and Jini
>> together, so not
>> everyone seems to agree on where the future is headed for both specs.
>> http://www.jini.org/wiki/
>> 10th_JCM_Sessions#Service_oriented_components_on_the_grid_using_OSGi_
>> and_Jini
>>
>
> Well, the long and the short of it is that neither spec is
> dependent on
> or needs the other.
>
> That's not to say that there isn't benefit in the two efforts working
> together but that's all about politics not tech.
>
> Dan.
>
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