Is OSGi going to become the next EJB ?

A few weeks ago I spotted an article that stated OSGi as "the next big thing after Spring". Actually, there are a whole bunch of articles, blogs etc... out there in the wild - all praising OSGi as one of the next "big things" that will reach many sectors in the Java space. I don't doubt this and I do admit that OSGi solves many problems and supports top notch architectural models such as high modularization and micro services. However, on the other side - after using OSGi for a couple of years and see how it performs (in the meaning of development performance) in different areas I really have doubts about OSGi.

Here are some things I love and hate about OSGi:

The concept of creating a system out of even hundred of typically pretty small bundles is very good. The really good thing about bundles in OSGi is that they have defined borders - not only in the sense of dependencies but also in the sense of runtime. Each bundle can serve as a micro application, having it's own lifecycle, having it's own citizens and each bundle can carefully decide which objects to expose to the outside world. Carefully adopted, this leads to a system with loose coupling and a high probability for reuse. However, at the same time the lifecycle model of OSGi makes life complicated. Actually, tracking services and managing all the aspects of what to do when services come and go is nasty (I've seen systems that had tried to manage these things with pretty large state machines in their bundle activators ... this is boiler plate that no one wants to write!) - Luckily, there's Spring DM out there that helps us manage these things. To be honest - I'd never even think about starting an OSGi project without using Spring DM. Altough Spring DM greatly reduced the complexity of bundle setup, it's still complicated. I still need to start the OSGi runtime and install and start the bundles - and I have to take care that all other bundles that I need are installed and started too ...

I personally think that we - as developers - have to enforce constraints on ourselves! We have to automatically check the defined constraints and let the build process fail if we e.g. accessed some classes we were not meant to access. OSGi's versioning concept (as a side effect ...) makes a first step of bringing the enforcement of architectural constraints to the developer's daily life by definining export and import packages ... and introduces a completely new dimension of problems! OSGi resolves versioning issues at runtime by giving each bundle it's own class loader and let that class loader see exactly the classes in the versions it depends on. Sounds neat ? Yes it is - and you will curse it! This leads to a really new dimension of problems, because it really changes the way your environment works. Your code passes all your unit tests, but once you start it in an OSGi runtime it crashes; Libraries crash because the enhance their classes at runtime; Singletons designed as static objects get created more than once; The story continues ... You typically end up in a situation where you constantly tweak your modules build specifications (that creates your manifest) and spread absolutely counter-intuitive dependencies across your whole system. Spring DM also addressed this topic - by adding some directives to your services and tweaking around with the class loaders ... and you still need to tweak and spread dependencies. I'm shivering at the thought that I need this workaround to even get started ...

Especially that class loading hell leads to a new dimension of problems. You will quickly notice that you cannot go on without a strong and automated integration testing suite that incorporates OSGi (another thing that Spring DM supports).

Now - what's my conclusion about all that stuff. First of all - before considering OSGi I would really check if I have the ultimate requirement to exchange bundles at runtime without shutting down the system - and even in this case I would really revisit these requirements and see if I can limit them to a corner where I could use other techniques for dynamically loading modules at runtime. There are alternatives out there fostering the architectural principles (e.g. you could use an IOC container, use independent container instances to enforce module independence, do constraint checking at build time, etc...) - most of these things are much closer to the KISS principle, avoid all the additional boiler plate code and build configuration - and therefore allow you to stay more agile.

I almost forgot the title :o) There's another technology out there with pretty the same characteristics (in terms of things being complicated): EJB. Spring is propably the most popular example of what can happen when a technology is way too complicated and makes life hard. Maybe we will experience the same thing with OSGi in in the next years ? I cannot say ... however, if this is the case, then there is a certain irony in that SpringSource now heavily supports OSGi :o)

Cheers,
Peter

Getting Started ...

I've finally overcome my inner temptation and created my own blog. So - what's this going to be about ?

In the past years I've seen a bulk of software technologies, architectures, processes, etc ... come and go and almost on a weekly basis I hear and read about new technologies, frameworks or programming languages. I am inherently interested in these things since I really try hard not to do or use things because I am just used to do it that way ... For me it's extremely important to continously evaluate upcoming ideas and see if it can help you doing your daily work.

This is a try to write my thoughts about the things I spot or experience in software engineering down and I'd honestly dying to get some comments on my thoughts :o)