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FREE EVENT: QCon in Finance eXchange: Neil Bartlett on OSGi in Banking
OSGi in Banking
OSGi, the dynamic module system for Java, holds the potential to transform the way banking software is built. Strong modularity and reusable components promise to break apart the "silo" or "stovepipe" architectures that prevent collaboration between different business areas in a bank IT organisation. Dynamic deployment and on-the-fly updates support provisioning of applications, both to desktops and to the Cloud.
Yet, there are challenges as well. Modularity and dynamicity require a rethink of some traditional Java development practices, and many existing enterprise libraries work poorly under such an environment. The benefits of OSGi are sometimes hard to see when faced with unfamiliar errors arising in previously working third-party JARs.
In this presentation Neil will discuss real-world benefits and best practices learned from using OSGi in one of the largest Wall Street banks, including some of the pitfalls and road-blocks encountered along way, and how to avoid them.
Review:
The OSGi Framework implements a dynamic component model which allows installation of components (bundles) on runtime. Neil Bartlett explains how this specification can change financial software development by providing collaboration between different business areas of a financial IT organisation. He also talks about challenges of introducing this new way of thinking into previous systems. Furthermore, experiences gained from implementing OSGi in one of the largest Wall Street banks are among the subjects of the talk.
Highly complex engineering problems can be solved by dividing them into modules. This is also applicable to software engineering problems faced during financial software development. However, modularisation can introduce its own problems like the “dll Hell” or the “Jar Hell” in Java. OSGi provides a solution to this problem by using a graph hierarchy for Jar files instead of a tree hierarchy. A bundle is basically a Jar file containing more descriptive information like version number, vendor name, dependencies and a more meaningful name. OSGi bundles can also work on systems that do not implement OSGi. Neil gives some more details about the OSGi programming model.
There are challenges facing the OSGi community that Neil touches on. For example, most of the current libraries are not OSGi bundles (yet!), however, repositories can be used by developers instead. Additionally, the Class.forName bug in the JRE is causing problems and it is not fully solved yet. Most of the application servers are in the process of moving to OSGi. Furthermore the Eclipse IDE already supports OSGi. OSGi is still in it's relative infancy within banking applications, but is poised to become an enterprise standard in the near future.
Read Neils PDF book on OSGi for free...
Review by Eren Aykin
ABOUT NEIL BARTLETT
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Neil is a developer, consultant and trainer
specialising in OSGi and Eclipse, and he is currently working for Sun
Microsystems on enhancing the tooling for JavaFX in Eclipse.
More about Neil Bartlett
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