ECF 3.14.19 released - simplify remote service discovery via properties

 ECF 3.14.19 has been released.

Along with the usual bug fixes, this release includes new documentation on the use of properties for discovering and importing remote services.   The docs describe the use of properties files for simplifying the import of remote services.   

This capability is especially useful for Eclipse RCP clients accessing Jax-RS/REST remote services.

Patrick Paulin describes a production usage his blog posting here.

Using properties to simplify discovery of OSGi Remote Services

OSGi Remote Services are discovered by ECF's Remote Services implementation in two ways:  

1. Via a network discovery protocol provider such as:  Zeroconf, jSLP, etcd, Zookeeper, or some custom protocol

2. Via an xml format known as an Endpoint Description Extender Format (EDEF)

 The EDEF format is specified by the OSGi Remote Service Admin specification.   

When importing an EDEF-defined remote service, it's typically necessary to construct the entire EDEF file 'by hand' rather than having he EDEF generated automatically.  This can be quite complicated to construct by hand as some properties are required, others are optional and it's not obvious what all of the values must be for successful import.

A new capability has been added to ECF's Remote Service Admin implementation that allows EDEF Properties to be used with the EDEF, thus simplifying the creation of remote service consumers that use EDEF for import.

This capability was added to support the usage of JaxRS Remote Services in an Eclipse RCP client.  See a description of this use case here.

ECF 3.14.6 Released

ECF 3.14.6 has been released and may be downloaded here.

In concert with this bug fix release have been a number of additions to ECF's github projects for Remote Services Development.

Distribution and Discovery Providers

New:  Apache Dubbo-based Distribution Provider
Enhanced:  Hazelcast-based Distribution Provider and New: Discovery Provider
Enhanced:  System and Service-Properties docs for Distribution Providers and Discovery Providers

Bndtools Development

Enhanced:  Bndtools Workspace, Project, and Bndrun templates for Remote Services Development
New:  Bndtools Workspace with Jersey JaxRS Distribution Provider and Tasklist Example
Enhanced:  Tutorial for using Bndtools for Remote Services Development

 

OSGi Remote Services with Apache Dubbo

ECF's implementation of OSGi R7 Remote Services allows for replacing the underlying distribution system (repsonsible for the object serialization, transport, and other things). 

This makes it relatively easy to replace one kind of distribution (e.g. Jersey, ActiveMQ) with other/new distribution systems. 

Apache Dubbo has recently been contributed to Apache, and we've created a distribution provider based upon Apache Dubbo.

Here's a list of open ECF Remote Service distribution providers.   If you would like Remote Services support for a particular transport, or you've created your own distribution (or discovery) based upon some other transport and wish to make it available to others please let us know.

Rest Remote Services with CXF or Jersey

ECF's Photon Release now includes an example of using Karaf with the JaxRS distribution provider.

This distribution provider now fully supports OSGi R7 remote services, including async remote services, using either the Jersey or CXF JaxRS implementations.

This allows service developers to easily use only JAX-RS annotations to define and implement OSGi R7 remote services.

ECF 3.11.0 - Custom Remote Services Distribution Providers

ECF 3.11.0 is released.

What's New:  A new distribution provider api to simplify the creation of Remote Services distribution providers.    We've used this new API to recently create distribution providers based upon Jax Rest Services standard (with CXF, Jersey, and RestEasy implementations) and Hazelcast.

Exposing an OSGi Service as a REST Service

In a previous tutorial I showed how to use ECF Remote Services and Jax-RS client technology to import and consume/use a REST service.

In more recent companion tutorial, I show how to use ECF Remote Services and Jax-RS server technology to export an OSGi service as a REST service.

Together, these tutorials show the use of ECF Remote Services and Jax-RS standards to easily but flexibly create, export, import, understand, and consume REST-based services.