OSGi Service Discovery

OSGi
• Introducing the OSGi Framework
– OSGi Alliance
– Components/Bundles
– Module and Life Cycle layer
• Services in OSGi
– Service Registry
– Service Patterns
– Remote Services

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 OSGi Alliance
• Open Services Gateway initiative
• OSGi Alliance is a non-profit consortium
– founded in march 1999
– specifies/maintains the OSGi standard
• specifying detailed API
• providing reference implementation / test cases
– Members: IBM, Nokia, Motorola, BMW,….

• Some open source implementations:

– Equinox OSGi, Knoplerfish OSGi, Apache Felix
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 OSGi Framework

Services

Security
Bundles Life Cycle

Modules

Execution Environment

Java Virtual Machine

Operating System

Hardware
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 OSGi Bundle
Bundle Manifest
• Packages

JAR FILE
import org.abc…
• Own classes, interfaces
• Other resources
export org.xy….
Services
Manifest file

Bundle version Life Cycle

Bundle symbolic name
Bundle classpath
BundleActivator
Modules
import packages

export packages Execution Environment

Java Virtual Machine 5

 deliver
install OSGi Life Cycle
automatic
Installed
Started
manual (other
bundles, user,…)
re

rt
s ol

ta
ve

s
d

Resolved Active Services

uninstall

Life Cycle
ll
sta
in
un

Stopped Modules
Uninstalled

Execution Environment

Java Virtual Machine 6

 OSGi Class Loading

Bundle Bundle

Manifest Services
import … Manifest
export … import …
export … Life Cycle
Class Loader provides
Modules
Class Loader

Execution Environment

Java Virtual Machine 7

 Services
• Component-oriented
– Components can be delivered and installed
dynamically, but cannot interact dynamically
• Service-oriented
– Bundles can provide interfaces as services
– Other bundles can find/bind/use/release them

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 OSGi Service Registry
Service Registry
• register services by providing class or
interface name and optional properties
• Find by interface/class name
z

• Bind by getting an object reference

xy
er

• Service provider can have one object for

ist

Service
g

all clients or for each client an object

re

(stateful)
• Registry is returning only compatible
versions of an object Life Cycle

Bundle yz
/ b ind x
fin d Modules
xyz.class

Bundle Execution Environment

abc.class
Java Virtual Machine 9
 Service Registry
• Problem
– Services can be provided and removed at any time
Client has to poll regularly to find an appropriate service
Client can get NullPointerException if service is removed

• Solutions provided by service discovery patterns

– Service Listener Pattern
– Service Tracker
– Whiteboard Pattern
– Declarative Services
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 Service Listener Pattern
Service Registry
•f ServiceListener

registe
callba

r
r xyz

listene
ck
e
regist

r
Requester
1. Implements ServiceListener interface with
Provider serviceChanged method
2. Register ServiceListener at Registry with
requested interface names/properties
3. Whenever an appropriate service is
xyz.class
registered the callback method
serviceChanged is invoked with an
ServiceEvent object as parameter
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 Service Tracker
• Problem
– ServiceListener is too complicate to implement, not
flexible enough and error prone

• Improvement is achieved by ServiceTracker

– User defined callback methods for adding,
removing, changing services
– Can block until an appropriate service is available
– If a used service was removed, it automatically
provides a new service if found
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 Events
• Use case
– Whenever an event occurs, multiple
requester/subscribers want to be informed

• Therefore the Event-Listener-Pattern and

Whiteboard Pattern are provided
– Whiteboard Patern is an big amendment of the
Event-Listener-Pattern, so we omit the Event-
Listener-Pattern

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 Whiteboard Pattern
Service Registry
•f ServiceListener

registe
callba

r
r xyz

listene
ck
e
regist

r
Subscriber
1. Implements ServiceListener interface with
Provider serviceChanged method
2. Register ServiceListener at Registry with
requested interface names/properties
3. Whenever an appropriate service is
xyz.class
registered the callback method
serviceChanged is invoked with an
ServiceEvent object as parameter
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