Aehso’s Output

The Eclipse Rich Server Platform Proposal

The new Rich Server Platform proposal does seem very interesting - tooling for packaging Web Applications (Java /Lazlo/PHP based) into OSGi bundles and deploying them onto Equinox/OSGi runtimes that are running on remote server VMs.

The goodness here comes from leveraging the OSGi R3 runtime’s dynamic bundle management capabilities to manage the lifecycle of bundles. And of course there is value to some in the fact that the underlying OSGi frameworks are neither Eclipse nor Java centric. So rather than dealing with technology centric deployment and packaging tooling and APIs, server side components are packaged into OSGi bundles and deployed using OSGi’s built in mechanisms. That includes being able to execute an (non-UI) Eclipse plugin on the server side. RSP takes this approach one step further by providing the tooling necessary for users to be able to create applications composed of local and remote bundles (i.e. hybrid RCP/RSP applications). RSP-UI will make this technology a lot more accessible to users.

From a server developers point of view, the OSGi R3 ‘kernel’ is the ideal foundation for dealing with the complex issue of creating an open and extensible server runtime - if only we had the luxury of re-writing existing servers from the ground up to take advantage of it! However, users are already experimenting with running bundles on remote VMs - they’ve even got Equinox running on a Slug and of course there are other OSGi
runtimes out there.

Wolfgang Gehner thinks this is a disruptive technology, and I’d certainly agree that is has the potential to be very compelling for server developers, tools developers and users alike. The problem might be bootstrapping adaption - getting the OSGi core into the server distributions and convincing users to start packaging their components as OSGi bundles (rather than .war files, for example).

I wonder how these initiatives will relate to IBM’s Autonomic Computing efforts.  In a previous incarnation, I had the pleasure of participating in a AC Solution Install working group that was working on providing solutions in a related space (supporting self-configuring servers).  I wonder will the AC toolkits need to incorporate OSGi at their core - I suspect so…

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