Execution environment

The execution environment

Figure 1. Overview of the System

The component model's execution environment, which is depicted in figure 1, is composed by a Java virtual machine, the OSGi framework and the ServiceBinder itself. The ServiceBinder is delivered inside a bundle (~70K) which makes it OSGi implementation independent.

Generic activator

The ServiceBinder's bundle exports a package that contains the GenericActivator class that makes it unnecessary to write code for the bundle activator (only an empty subclass needs to be provided). The generic activator parses the component descriptor file and creates the instance managers that correspond to every component entry in the descriptor. The component descriptor is located through a new property defined inside the bundle manifest, the Metadata-Location property.

Subclassing the GenericActivator and writing a component descriptor is all that is needed to create a component whose dependencies are managed by the ServiceBinder.

Manifest

Bundle-Activator: org.foo.mybundle.impl.Activator
Import-Package: org.ungoverned.gravity.servicebinder; specification-version="1.1.0"
...
Metadata-Location: org/foo/simpleservice/res/metadata.xml

Activator

package org.foo.mybundle.impl;

import org.ungoverned.gravity.servicebinder.GenericActivator;

public class Activator extends GenericActivator
{
}

Figure 2. Extension to the manifest and the GenericActivator subclass

Compatibility with 'standard' OSGi

The concepts presented here are completely compatible with standard OSGi, as the services provided by component instances can be used by standard OSGi bundles, and component instances can use services provided by standard OSGi bundles.

Architectural service

To use the ServiceBinder, it is not necessary to activate is. Activating this bundle results, however, in the registration of an ArchitectureService, that allows the architecture of the running application to be introspected. Figure 3 shows and architecture viewer that displays the structure of the running application. This viewer can be obtained from the download pages and is installed as a separate bundle. Usage of the ArchitecureService is discussed later in this document.

Figure 3. An architecture viewer

Last revision : 20 January 2004
(c) H. Cervantes and R.S. Hall

Next : Using the service binder

Previous : Instance management

Index