InfoQ has a discussion thread summarizing the reactions to the announcement of the SpringSource Application Plaform. Michael Burke asked a great question on that thread which can be paraphrased as "forgetting the hype surrounding OSGi, what benefits can I expect to see if I port an application currently packaged as an EAR to OSGi bundles?".

I started answering this question on the InfoQ thread, but my answer was growing too long for a comment so instead I'll address it here.

The question is a good one. The main difference you will see in an OSGi-based application versus a traditional JEE EAR-based application is improved modularity. So the question becomes, does this improved modularity bring me any benefits, and if so what are they? The book "Design Rules, The Power of Modularity" gives a very thorough treatment of the question. It's great background but I get that feeling that Michael may be looking for something a little less theoretical than what you'll find in that book…

It's been great to hear so much discussion on the SpringSource Application Platform, online and on the floor here at JavaOne. One of the most insightful comments is from WebSphere transaction architect Ian Robinson:

Does any of this affect WebSphere? Well, nothing has changed in the core Spring framework. Regardless of what the future holds for the SpringSource Application Platform, the core Spring framework project remains complimentary to WebSphere. Like fish and chips.

One of the main advantages of the SpringSource Application Platform is its ability to provision dependencies on an as-needed basis. The benefits of this are two-fold: it ensures that the Platform's memory footprint is as small as possible and it allows applications to be deployed without encapsulating all of their dependencies in a monolithic deployment unit, e.g. a WAR file. To take advantage of these capabilities you will require an understanding of the Platform's provisioning repository and this blog intends to provide just that.

Where is the provisioning repository and how does it work?

• ext contains external dependencies that are provided with the Platform but are not part of the Platform itself.
• subsystems contains all of the subsystems that comprise the Platform.
• usr is initially empty and is intended to contain user-added dependencies, i.e. anything upon which your applications depend that is not already provided by the Platform.

Runtime provisioning

When a deployed application is started by the Platform its…

The SpringSource Application Platform is constructed from OSGi bundles and supports applications which are also constructed from OSGi bundles. The Platform supports the standard features of OSGi, but it also supports some additional manifest headers. Several people have asked Why did SpringSource add proprietary headers? and What are the semantics of the new headers?, so this post explains the background motivation and the semantics of Import-Library and Import-Bundle.

Standard OSGi Bundle Support

So OSGi savvy developers can use the Platform as a standard OSGi container and benefit from Platform features such as:

• the ability to deploy bundles using the Admin Console or by dropping bundles in the Platform's pickup directory,
• diagnostics such as resolution failure diagnosis, application specific trace, and automatic deadlock detection,
• strong integration with Spring and Spring Dynamic Modules, for developers who want to use these frameworks, and
• automatic provisioning of dependencies from a repository.

Additional Requirements of Enterprise Applications

Well, some steps in the process are relatively easy, especially if good software engineering practices have been followed and the code has been organised into service, domain, and infrastructure components. These components can be converted into bundles and the dependencies between them expressed using standard OSGi Import-Package and Export-Package headers in META-INF/MANIFEST.MF.

A more difficult step is expressing dependencies on enterprise frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate. It is entirely possible to express these dependencies using standard OSGi Import-Package and Require-Bundle headers, and this is exactly what you should do if your aim is to create OSGi bundles which will run in other OSGi containers, but this approach has some hidden costs.

Firstly, the developer has to decide precisely which packages comprise a given framework. It isn't sufficient merely to import the packages the application code uses, as several enterprise frameworks weave further dependencies into the bytecode of the application when the application is loaded. The developer has to discover, probably by trial and error, which additional implementation packages to import to ensure correct behaviour of the woven application.

Then there is the chore of migrating from one version of a framework to the next where the precise set of packages comprising the framework has changed. The additional packages required for weaving are typically not defined by a public contract and so are subject to change.

Additionally, the resultant package imports don't properly capture the design intent, which makes maintaining or extending the application more difficult in the future.

We really don't want to impose these burdens on our users, so we created some additional SpringSource Application Platform specific manifest headers, Import-Library and Import-Bundle, as convenient ways of expressing dependencies on enterprise frameworks. As you'll see below, these headers are really just syntactic sugar which are expressed in terms of standard OSGi package imports.

Import-Library

    Import-Library: <librarySymbolicName>;version=<versionRange>

If you are unfamiliar with OSGi version range notation, by far the most commonly used forms are minimum version ranges such as 2, meaning version 2 or later, and half-open ranges such as [2.2.1,2.2.2), meaning any version between 2.2.1 inclusive and 2.2.2 exclusive. If version=<versionRange> is omitted, together with the semicolon delimiter of course, then the default range includes all versions.

For each library import, the Platform selects the library with the given symbolic name and the highest version in the given version range available in the Platform's repository. The Platform then replaces the library import with a set of package imports which match all the packages exported by the bundles of the library. The Platform detects the situation where a bundle imports two or more libraries which export a common package, issues an appropriate log message, and fails to install the importing bundle.

So, for example, the following header imports some version of the Spring Framework library between 2.5.4 inclusive and 2.5.5 exclusive:

    Import-Library: org.springframework.spring;version="[2.5.4,2.5.5)"

Optional Library Import

    Import-Library: <librarySymbolicName>;version=<versionRange>;resolution:=optional

If resolution is not specified, or is specified as mandatory, the bundle containing the import library header will fail to install if there is no library with the given symbolic name and a version in the given range. But if resolution:=optional is specified, the library import will be ignored if no suitable library is available.

So, for example, the following header imports some version of the Spring Framework library from 2.5 onwards, but is ignored if no suitable library is available:

    Import-Library: org.springframework.spring;version="2.5";resolution:=optional

Importing More than One Library

    Import-Library: org.foo.p;version="[1,2)",org.bar.q;version="[2,3)"

Import-Bundle

As you would expect, for each imported bundle, the Platform selects the bundle with the given symbolic name and the highest version in the given version range available in the Platform's repository. The Platform then replaces the bundle import with a set of package imports matching the packages exported by the bundle.

So, for example, the following header imports the Hibernate Object-Relational Mapper bundle:

    Import-Bundle: com.springsource.org.hibernate;version="[3.2.6,3.2.7)"

Why not Overload Require-Bundle?

Well, we wanted Require-Bundle to retain its standard semantics, including the ability to marry together pieces of a split package. But we wanted Import-Library and Import-Bundle to have the same underlying semantics as Import-Package which avoid the complexities of split packages.

We also anticipate that, as the Platform evolves over time, we'll need to add further directives to Import-Library and Import-Bundle which would not be appropriate to add to Require-Bundle.

What Next?

For users who want to take advantage of the Platform's headers, but who need to produce bundles which will run on other OSGi containers, we plan to produce a tool which will replace the Import-Library and Import-Bundle…

Since we released the SpringSource Application Platform last Wednesday, numerous developers have downloaded the 1.0.0 beta and started taking the Platform for a test drive. As a result, people have begun asking, "How can I deploy my apps on the Platform, and what kind of deployment and packaging options do I have?" Moreover, developers are eagerly requesting to see working samples. In response, the S2AP team will be releasing several sample applications over the coming weeks demonstrating these features and more, but before you get your hands on these samples, I'd like to give you a high-level…

A lot of people have been asking what exactly the SpringSource Application Platform does for Spring applications to make them run well under OSGi, over and above what you can get out of the box with OSGi and Spring Dynamic Modules. Adrian’s post yesterday highlighted some of the general issues, now lets look at a few of the details.

The three most challenging aspects of running Spring applications on OSGi are:

• Load-time weaving
• Classpath scanning
• Thread context classloader management

The remaining, but less interesting, issues include: JSP support, TLD scanning, annotation matching and resource lookups. Overall, there was a decent-sized set of issues that needed to be solved to make applications deploy smoothly.

Load-time weaving

Load-time weaving was one of the most problematic features to support in a robust manner. At the basic level, it requires hooking into the Equinox ClassLoader so that standard ClassFileTransformers can be attached and used during the defineClass calls. On top of this, many uses of LTW require access to a throwaway ClassLoader that can be used to inspect types to decide what needs to happen during the weave, without affecting the real ClassLoader.

This base level of support was actually reasonably simple to achieve. The difficulty comes in when weaving is driven by classes in one bundle, but classes in another bundle need to be woven. This is pretty common in enterprise applications where one bundle contains domain entities and another contains types that use a JPA EntityManager. The Platform takes care of this complexity by ensuring that all bundles in an application can be woven with the appropriate ClassFileTransformers.

When you start propagating weaving across to other bundles, you really need to know when to stop. If you simply apply weaving to all bundles, then applications will interfere with each other. The Platform prevents this from happening by explicitly scoping weaving so that it applies only to modules in the application.

Another issue with LTW is that it complicates refresh. When a bundle is refreshed, OSGi will refresh all the bundles that depend on it. This means that, in the example I gave above, refreshing the domain bundle will cause the EntityManager bundle to be refreshed. However, refreshing the EntityManager does not refresh the domain bundle, meaning that weaving is possibly out of sync. The Platform handles this by propagating refresh to other bundles that are affected by weaving.

Classpath scanning

With classpath scanning, the main issue is that Equinox doesn’t expose standard jar: and file: resources. The Platform puts an adapter in the middle so that libraries see the resource protocols that they expect. This has a nice side-effect of making a lot of third-party libraries work - it’s not just a fix for classpath scanning.

Thread context classloader management

Many third-party libraries use the thread context ClassLoader to access application types and resources. Each bundle in OSGi has it’s own ClassLoader, so therefore, only one bundle can be exposed as the thread context ClassLoader at any time. This means that if a third-party library needs to see types that are distributed across multiple bundles, it isn’t going to work as expected.

The Platform fixes this by creating a ClassLoader that imports all the exported packages of every module in your application. This ClassLoader is then exposed as the thread context ClassLoader, enabling third-party libraries to see all the exported types in your application.

This is just a small cross-section of the issues that are addressed by the Platform but hopefully it gives you an idea of what the Platform means for Spring Framework users.

** Updated May 2nd with case study :- see the bottom of this post for details ** I'm sure most of you reading this blog will have seen the announcement of the SpringSource Application Platform yesterday. If not, be sure to check out Rob's blog post which describes some of the motivation, programming model, and roadmap.

A couple of common questions are being asked that I'd like to address straight away in this post. After that I'll describe two other exciting announcements that complement the SpringSource Application Platform itself but that didn't grab the headlines yesterday: the…

After many months of feverish coding, I am pleased to announce the beta release of the SpringSource Application Platform 1.0.

At the beginning of 2007 we began discussing possible alternatives to the monolithic and heavyweight application servers with which Enterprise Java has become synonymous. Customers were looking for a platform that was lightweight, modular and flexible enough to meet their development and deployment needs.

The Spring and Tomcat pairing demonstrates that developers and operators can successfully use a lightweight platform in production. Despite the success of this combination, the lack of modularity and explicit support for non-web applications limits its applicability and flexibility.

We set about building the SpringSource Application Platform to address these requirements and remove these limitations.

At the heart of the Platform is the Dynamic Module Kernel (DMK). The DMK is an OSGi-based kernel that takes full advantage of the modularity and versioning of the OSGi platform. The DMK builds on Equinox and extends its capabilities for provisioning and library management, as well as providing core function for the Platform.

To maintain a minimal runtime footprint, OSGi bundles are installed on demand by the DMK provisioning subsystem. This allows for an application to be installed into a running Platform and for its dependencies to be satisfied from an external repository. Not only does this remove the need to manually install all your application dependencies, which would be tedious, but it keeps memory usage to a minimum.

The DMK itself requires a minimal set of bundles to run, and is configured with a profile to control exactly the set of additional modules that are loaded. For example, the DMK does not require Tomcat to be present, but the default Platform profile includes Tomcat to allow web applications to be deployed. If you want to run a Platform without Tomcat, you can simply edit the profile and it won’t be installed. (If you try this - remember that removing web support means that web modules will no longer deploy, so delete the contents of the pickup directory so the platform won’t attempt to install the Admin and splash screen applications when it starts.) The default Platform configuration with the admin console installed takes only 15MB of memory.

One frustration I have always had with Enterprise Java is that applications are often shoe-horned into contrived silos, and that explicit support for different application types is lacking. Consider an application for an online store. This application has a web front-end, a message-driven order processing module, a batch-driven stock reordering module and a B2B web service module. Today, many applications like this would be packaged as a WAR or an EAR and the modules would look very similar, with little support for the differences in the module types. Interestingly, many people would refer to this as a web application, rather than an application with a web module.

In the SpringSource Application Platform, applications are modular and each module has a personality that describes what kind of module it is: web, batch, web service, etc. The Platform deploys modules of each personality in a personality-specific manner. For example, web modules are configured in Tomcat with web context. Each module in the application can be updated independently of the other modules whilst retaining the identity of being part of the larger application. Whatever kind of application you are building, the programming model remains standard Spring and Spring DM.

In the 1.0 Platform release we support the web and bundle personalities, which enable you to build sophisticated web applications. Future releases will include support for more personalities as detailed later.

Building Applications

The Platform supports applications packaged in three forms:

1. Java EE WAR
2. Raw OSGi bundles
3. Platform Archive (PAR)

Standard WAR files are supported directly in the Platform. At deployment time, the WAR file is transformed into an OSGi bundle and installed into Tomcat. All the standard WAR contracts are honoured, and your existing WAR files should just drop in and deploy without change.

Any OSGi-compliant bundle can be deployed directly into the Platform, and can take full advantage of on-the-fly provisioning for any dependencies referred to by Import-Package and Require-Bundle.

The PAR format is the recommended approach for packaging and deploying applications for the Platform. A PAR is simply a collection of OSGi bundles (modules) grouped together in a standard JAR file, along with a name and a version that uniquely identify the application. The PAR file is deployed as a single unit into the Platform. The Platform will extract all the modules from the PAR and install them. Third-party dependencies will be installed on-the-fly as needed.

The PAR format has three main benefits over deploying the bundles directly into the Platform. Firstly, it’s just easier. An average-sized enterprise application might contain 12+ bundles - deploying these by hand will be far too cumbersome. Secondly, the PAR file forms an explicit scope around all the bundles in the application which prevents applications that use overlapping types or services from clashing with each other. This scope is also used by some advanced features such as load-time weaving to ensure that weaving of one application doesn’t interfere with weaving of another. Lastly, the PAR forms a logical grouping to define what modules are part of an application and what third-party dependencies the application has. This grouping is used by the management tools to provide a detailed view of the application. A typical PAR application looks like this:

Dependencies between modules in an application are typically expressed using Import-Package and Export-Package. Dependencies on third-party libraries can be expressed in the same way, but for many libraries this can be error-prone and time-consuming. When using a library such as Hibernate, you will typically have to import more packages than you initially expect. To get around this you could use Require-Bundle, but this has some semantic rough edges such as split packages where a logical package is split across two or more class loaders causing problems at runtime. The Platform introduces two new mechanisms for referring to third-party dependencies: Import-Bundle and Import-Libary. Import-Bundle is analogous to Require-Bundle except it prevents split packages and the other problems with Require-Bundle. Import-Library provides a mechanism to refer to all the packages exported by a group of bundles, for instance all bundles in the Spring Framework, in a single declaration:

Bundle-SymbolicName: com.myapp.dao.jdbc
Bundle-Version: 1.0.0
Import-Bundle: org.apache.commons.dbcp;version="1.2.2.osgi"
Import-Library: org.springframework.spring;version="2.5.4.A"

Here I have a module bundle that depends on the Commons DBCP bundle and the Spring Framework library. The Spring Framework library contains all the bundles needed to use Spring in your application.

Import-Library and Import-Bundle expand under the covers into Import-Package and are therefore consistent with standard OSGi semantics.

The Platform understands the personality of a module, and from this can infer how to configure the module’s execution environment. When deploying a web module, all the servlet infrastructure needed for a typical Spring MVC application is created automatically, removing the need to recreate this boilerplate code across applications. In the 1.0 final release, more smarts will be added to the web module personality to support additional technologies such as Spring Web Flow.

Whatever packaging format you choose, the programming model is simply Spring Framework and Spring Dynamic Modules, with the other Spring Portfolio products running on top.

Serviceability

Serviceability was a critical consideration for the whole engineering team. We have spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about the format of log messages and the size of stack traces to make sure that diagnosing problems with your applications is as easy as possible. Any time we find a task that is repetitive and time-consuming we look for a way to automate it or remove it altogether.

To aid with problem diagnosis the Platform has a strong split between log and trace messages. Log messages are intended for end-user consumption and allow you to get access to the most important failure information without having to trawl through gigabytes of trace content. All application failures are displayed and coded in the log output - the codes serving as a convenient way to access knowledge base or support content. To understand why this is so useful, consider the following output from Platform startup:

[2008-04-29 12:12:01.124] main                     <SPKB0001I> Platform starting.
[2008-04-29 12:12:04.037] main                     <SPKE0000I> Boot subsystems installed.
[2008-04-29 12:12:06.013] main                     <SPKE0001I> Base subsystems installed.
[2008-04-29 12:12:07.396] platform-dm-1            <SPPM0000I> Installing profile 'web'.
[2008-04-29 12:12:07.674] platform-dm…

Yesterday, I blogged about how Spring helps maximize application portability. Even if the portability problem has been an ongoing topic in enterprise Java land for many years, that blog was timely. Today, Oracle announced that its $6.7 billion acquisition of BEA Systems has closed. There is substantial overlap between the product sets of the two companies, so this is bound to bring uncertainty to the WebLogic and OC4J customer bases. WebLogic and OC4J may both fall into the "J2EE server" category but they are very different products with very different characteristics.

Since many enterprise…