OSGi and Equinox: Creating Highly Modular Java Systems [With Access Code]

Overall the book is excellent. The writing is clear and concise which is a huge change from some of the computer books I've been seeing. This is a very good book on OSGi and covers almost everything one would need to develop OSGi applications. As someone new to OSGi development I felt right at home diving in to the details and starting the conversion of an existing project. The only reason I cannot give it 5 stars is the lack of discussion on dynamically loading JDBC libraries. Although this is an issue with OSGi technology in general, I would have thought that the book would have a discussion on how to implement a strategy on JDBC loading that doesn't include either manually loading JDBC via a class loader or adding package imports thereby creating a dependency on specific JDBC driver(s) - in my case this isn't even an option.

Summary: This is a well executed and detailed explanation of how to develop modular Java systems and applications using OSGi and Equinox. It uses the development of an easy to follow example application, called Toast, as the vehicle to explain OSGi theory and practice using Equninox. One of the main themes of the book is the whys and hows of OSGi Declarative Services. In general, it is a good book for OSGi beginners, but familiarity with Eclipse is a perquisite. Advanced developers will find it to be a good resource and example of OSGi best practices. The writing was clear and well edited; you could tell that it had been through many revisions to get it to its current polished state. The step-by-step instructions for the examples was at the right level for me, with enough detail to get things to work without being overly long. For instance, I find that I quickly get the concept of the example, but then I like to be given the details of what to name things and exactly what else to do, so that I can concentrate on the example and keep things moving along. Another bonus that comes with the book is an Eclipse plug-in that can be installed from the web which includes the source code of all of the examples organized by chapter. It manifests itself as a special view in Eclipse that lists all of the example code. One can use this view to populate the workspace with the example code from any chapter, or, to compare the current workspace contents to the book's example. I found this last feature to be a great help as there were several times where things were not working and I was stuck for a solution. By simply comparing my manually entered version of the example code with the chapter's reference version, I quickly found the small differences that were causing problems and was quickly on my way. This ability is the next best thing to having the authors look over your shoulder and tell you what you did wrong. I did run into a few issues with the book. There were several times where the steps provided to produce the example code were not complete. These were minor things like a missing dependency specification or in one case a default value produced by a wizard that needed to be explicitly set to something else. Mostly, these were no problem to correct. Basically, I wasn't disappointed, this is a good book that delivers on what it promises.

"OSGi and Equinox"is the first "Eclipse Series" book I have read. It has three parts. The first part is an introduction. The brief history shows how OSGI came to be and the benefits. It had excellent visuals to see the concepts being presented. The second part is an extended tutorial to create the TOAST application from scratch. The tutorial assumes you've never used Eclipse before so it was a bit slow to get started. I would have liked seeing how to create a project/class as an appendix. There were a ton of IDE screenshots so I certainly felt like I was doing the tutorial with the author. That style got a little dry/repetitive; maybe because I wasn't following along on a computer. Many concepts were covered and there were good tips and warnings to the reader. I was a bit puzzled why the tests are using easyMock with Java 5 and Junit 4. I'll be sure to ask the author when he is at JavaRanch the week of April 20th. The third part is "deep dives" into specific concepts. This section was less tutorial-y and I liked it better. It includes patterns, the lifecycle and crosscutting concerns. There is also an "other"/kitchen sink chapter that contains numerous tips and tracks. Overall, I did learn a lot from the book. If you are looking to learn OSGi/Equinox, I think it is good to read.

I've never learned starting with a wizard-generated code and then trying to decipher what it does with the help of authors explainations on that code. Many authors may still believe that, this is the right and concrete way, but it never worked for me. I'm theory oriented. I must have a goal at very early stages, and I want to know answers of all my WHY-questions. Otherwise I'll give up. Actually, I want to write (not to generate) code and have full control on it. Tools are there to easily modify and manage the code, if and only if I completely know and understand the purpose. This book DOES NOT start with wizard code. Further it chooses a very smart starting point. Very likely, a programmer started his eclipse plug-in and RCP adventure as being an eclipse JDT user. Thus, he knows programming java and uses eclipse as IDE, he deploys his applications in jar's etc... And this book takes you to the journey exactly at this point. It starts with ordinary java classes, and converts them to plug-ins and step by step ports this very simple code to a component based profi application.