felix/OSGi as a deployment platform [newbie]

[Todd Costella <To...@shaw.ca>]

Greetings all.

We have a multi-tiered Java/Swing application that our clients deploy  
within their organizations. We would like to provide incremental  
updates to our clients from a repository that we host. The incremental  
updates we are envisioning are things like new report definitions,  
database upgrade scripts that sort of thing. Initially we are not  
thinking of deploying new versions of the application through this  
mechanism.

My current thoughts are that an administrator at our clients could  
browse our repository and selectively choose to download and install  
one or more components (bundles).  This is very much like the  
AutoUpdate features that are common in IDEs like NetBeans and Eclipse.

I'm trying to figure out if using felix/OSGi would make sense for this  
kind of problem or perhaps is overkill. I understand the power of OSGi  
is dynamic class loading which in my case, is not really required.

 From the client application perspective, there would be the  
requirement to connect to the repository, retrieve bundles that are  
applicable for the version of the software they are running (possibly  
a range of versions), select the bundles they want installed. The  
client bundles would be sent over the wire, verified, and then  
installed. Log information would be sent back to our repository so we  
could keep track of which updates are installed at which client sites,  
when they were installed by whom etc.

 From the repository perspective, the bundles would move through a  
release process to a point where they are sanctioned by a release  
manager and made available for clients to install.

I have reviewed http://felix.apache.org/site/apache-felix-framework-launching-and-embedding.html 
  and the embedding scenario makes some sense to me. I guess what I'm  
curious about is that given that my bundles won't contain executable  
java code but resources that will need to be processed by a resource  
handler on the client side is this a problem that felix could help me  
with or perhaps an alternate approach is in order.

I appreciate any suggestions/comments anyone on the list has.

Thanks in advance

Todd

Re: felix/OSGi as a deployment platform [newbie]

[Marcel Offermans <ma...@luminis.nl>]

On Apr 14, 2009, at 23:15 , Todd Costella wrote:

> I guess what I'm
> curious about is that given that my bundles won't contain executable
> java code but resources that will need to be processed by a resource
> handler on the client side is this a problem that felix could help me
> with or perhaps an alternate approach is in order.

Take a look at the Deployment Admin specification in the R4.1  
compendium. It describes how versioned sets of bundles and other  
resources can be deployed to a target and how these resources can be  
processed by so called "resource processors" that install them on the  
target. I would definitely suggest you use that. We have an  
implementation here at Felix, but it's not yet released so you have to  
build it from source yourself.

Greetings, Marcel


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