Andrej Koelewijn

OSGi could mean a big boost for middleware innovation.Current application servers all try to be as complete as possible, so they rank high in industry analyst’ charts, like the one you see here. Being up there in the right top corner is what it’s all about. So they all include everything and the kitchen sink, resulting in huge applications. Some of them even require more than one installation dvd.

But is this really what users need? Most people don’t need everything that is included in these middleware solutions. For most solutions a web container is sufficient. You also have to wonder if every component offered by the middleware vendor is the right component for your problem.

Wouldn’t it be much better if you could pick a small application server and extend it with the functionality required? And be able to select components from multiple vendors? This is actually the biggest benefit of OSGi. With OSGi you can use a small OSGi container (like apache felix) and extend it with the components that you need. For example a Spring bundle, a web container bundle, and an ESB bundle.

And because you’re not limited to the components provided by your OSGi vendor, you can pick any OSGi complient component, we’ll see more competition and more innovation. Don’t like BPEL for orchestration? Replace it with something else. Don’t like doing ESB the visual way? Just replace it with something like Apache Camel.

I think we need a lot more innovation before we can standardize on the right SOA approach, and OSGi will play a big part in enabling this innovation. Good thing OSGi is becomming the standard for application servers, as you can see from this list on InfoQ: OSGi in the Enterprise.