Integration of Camel with Saxon

[Michael Kay <mi...@saxonica.com>]

As the developer of Saxon, I'm seeing an increasing number of problems reported by users trying to run Saxon under Apache Camel.

In the past I've generally taken the view that when an application does a highly customised integration of Saxon, then users should turn to the support channel for that application for help if the problem is specific to that environment. However, it's clear that we need to work together to get to the bottom of these issues and find a way to move forward in the interests of the user community.

The main problems relate to the use of OSGi and its effect on dynamic class loading, which Saxon uses primarily for (a) loading of "reflexive" extension functions, and (b) loading of generated bytecode. Neither of these (fortunately) are features available in the open source Saxon-HE product, so they only emerge when users try to upgrade to a commercial version of Saxon.

There also seem to be some issues caused by Camel use of internal Saxon interfaces that aren't stable across releases (one of the benefits of an OSGi bundle should be, in theory, that we can start to make it clear which interfaces are for external use and which are intended to be internal).

I don't know where to start in terms of understanding how Camel's integration of Saxon works, so it's very hard for me to make progress on these issues.

I'm therefore reaching out to ask who in the Camel developer community would be prepared to work with me to find a resolution?

Michael Kay
Saxonica

Re: Integration of Camel with Saxon

[Andrea Cosentino <an...@gmail.com>]

Hello Michael,

Probably the best way to start is understading what kind of (specific)
issues you're facing reported.

The camel-saxon component is here:
https://github.com/apache/camel/tree/master/components/camel-saxon

and his documentation is here:
https://github.com/apache/camel/tree/master/components/camel-saxon/src/main/docs

I can try to help with other members of the community and I'll be happy to
do it.

Cheers.
Andrea


Il giorno ven 10 mag 2019 alle ore 13:45 Michael Kay <mi...@saxonica.com> ha
scritto:

> As the developer of Saxon, I'm seeing an increasing number of problems
> reported by users trying to run Saxon under Apache Camel.
>
> In the past I've generally taken the view that when an application does a
> highly customised integration of Saxon, then users should turn to the
> support channel for that application for help if the problem is specific to
> that environment. However, it's clear that we need to work together to get
> to the bottom of these issues and find a way to move forward in the
> interests of the user community.
>
> The main problems relate to the use of OSGi and its effect on dynamic
> class loading, which Saxon uses primarily for (a) loading of "reflexive"
> extension functions, and (b) loading of generated bytecode. Neither of
> these (fortunately) are features available in the open source Saxon-HE
> product, so they only emerge when users try to upgrade to a commercial
> version of Saxon.
>
> There also seem to be some issues caused by Camel use of internal Saxon
> interfaces that aren't stable across releases (one of the benefits of an
> OSGi bundle should be, in theory, that we can start to make it clear which
> interfaces are for external use and which are intended to be internal).
>
> I don't know where to start in terms of understanding how Camel's
> integration of Saxon works, so it's very hard for me to make progress on
> these issues.
>
> I'm therefore reaching out to ask who in the Camel developer community
> would be prepared to work with me to find a resolution?
>
> Michael Kay
> Saxonica