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OSGi configuration best practices [message #514464]

Mon, 15 February 2010 08:00

Eclipse User

Hi,
I'm looking for ideas on how to configure OSGi based server-side products.

We have some server-side products that are installed with servlet bridge
on apache tomcat containers on our test servers and on our clients'
servers. We build these products with PDEBuild and add some custom steps
at the end to configure the builds to the specific location where they
go. For example we configure a database connection string to access a
certain database.

In our current solution we end up with a bunch of WARs for each product.
Each WAR is completely configured for a specific customer (e.g.
ProductX-CustomerY-prod, ProductX-CustomerY-test, ...). This is handy,
if we have to update or reinstall a product: one doesn't have to think a
lot. But on the other hand, it's a lot of bytes wasted when one
configured product is just in some properties different from another
one. This multiplies since we are doing CI with cruise control and try
to keep a certain number of builds.

What are the alternatives?
- Manual configuration after the installation (setting properties in
config.ini)
- Creating multiple products: One for each configuration.
- Creating configuration features, one for each configuration. At the
clients site we would install the (unconfigured) base product and the
appropriate configuration feature.
- others?

Thanks for hints, tips and pointers
Peter

Re: OSGi configuration best practices [message #515117 is a reply to message #514464]

Wed, 17 February 2010 08:48

Eclipse User

Peter,

That sounds a great deal like the sorts of problems some of our product
teams are solving with p2 on the server. For the infocenter usecase we
install a base help server under the servletbridge and then use p2 to
provision new help topics and new language locales. I wonder if a similar
approach might work for you.

The challenge here is that the approach is bleeding edge and the
documentation limited however this is something we actually support right
now. Server-provisioning is a really interesting topic near and dear to my
heart; if you (or really anyone) are interested in talking about this stuff
find me at Eclipsecon and I can provide more detail. Another good source of
information is Scott Lewis of ECF fame as he's also heavily involved.

-Simon

"Peter Kullmann" <p.kullmann@arenae.ch> wrote in message
news:hlbgi7$7t5$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hi,
> I'm looking for ideas on how to configure OSGi based server-side products.
>
> We have some server-side products that are installed with servlet bridge
> on apache tomcat containers on our test servers and on our clients'
> servers. We build these products with PDEBuild and add some custom steps
> at the end to configure the builds to the specific location where they go.
> For example we configure a database connection string to access a certain
> database.
>
> In our current solution we end up with a bunch of WARs for each product.
> Each WAR is completely configured for a specific customer (e.g.
> ProductX-CustomerY-prod, ProductX-CustomerY-test, ...). This is handy, if
> we have to update or reinstall a product: one doesn't have to think a lot.
> But on the other hand, it's a lot of bytes wasted when one configured
> product is just in some properties different from another one. This
> multiplies since we are doing CI with cruise control and try to keep a
> certain number of builds.
>
> What are the alternatives?
> - Manual configuration after the installation (setting properties in
> config.ini)
> - Creating multiple products: One for each configuration.
> - Creating configuration features, one for each configuration. At the
> clients site we would install the (unconfigured) base product and the
> appropriate configuration feature.
> - others?
>
> Thanks for hints, tips and pointers
> Peter

Re: OSGi configuration best practices [message #516723 is a reply to message #514464]

Wed, 24 February 2010 17:02

Eclipse User

This scenario is what org.eclipse.equinox.cm (Configuration Admin) is intended to solve. Basically it is a framework for allowing one bundle to provide configuration to another bundle.

For example, we have a servlet that we use to configure our application server and it provides configuration for other bundles in the system. It also restarts those bundles when the configuration changes via the servlet.

Download OSGi Service Platform Service Compendium from http://www.osgi.org/download/r4-v4.2-cmpn-draft-20090310.pdf and check out section 104 - Configuration Admin Service Specification. org.eclipse.equinox.cm is the equinox implementation of this service ...

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