The OSGi Alliance announces that the OSGi Core Release 6 Specification is available for download. Developers will use the new specification to more easily extend the functionality of their software.
The OSGi Core Specification delivers an open, common architecture for enterprises, service providers, software developers and vendors, gateway operators and equipment manufacturers to develop, deploy and manage software services in a coordinated manner. It enables entirely new categories of networked devices and enterprise software services due to its flexible and managed deployment of services.
“Any developer working with products that need a robust, dynamic environment, especially those with agile components, will benefit from the new and updated features in OSGi Core Release 6,” said Dan Bandera, president of the OSGi Alliance. “Alliance members drive OSGi specifications to meet a broad range of market requirements. With Release 6, service providers, enterprises, device manufacturers or anyone else working with a networked system within a wide span of industries can leverage the spec to dynamically extend their solution and service portfolio according to market needs.”
New Release 6 features include:
• Type Roles for Semantic Versioning and Versioning Annotations to document version and type role information for packages. Tools can use this information for baseline comparisons and OSGi bundle manifest generation.
• Data Transfer Objects Specification, which defines an easily serializable/deserializable data object format for use in capturing and transferring state information.
• Service Scope and Prototype Service Factory for component models like Declarative Services and Blueprint to identify the scope of a registered service object, including whether a bundle can properly obtain multiple service objects for a referenced service.
The new and updated features are generally applicable to all OSGi users and were driven by experiences and needs stemming from the technical OSGi expert groups and Bnd tooling. OSGi Alliance members determine how and when OSGi specifications will be upgraded, expanded and enhanced, which can benefit members’ product offerings.
OSGi Core Release 6 Specification can be downloaded at http://www.osgi.org/Specifications/HomePage.
OSGi technology provides a modular architecture for today’s large-scale distributed systems as well as small, embedded applications. Building agile systems from in-house and off-the-shelf modules significantly reduces development and maintenance expenses.
