Java / OSGi and Maven

I would be pleased to see standard container for services coming into place in mobile (OSGi) as well as entreprise application server (e.g.: Java EE (Glassfish)).
OSGi and the future Java 7 include such functionality.
We will need also some way to uniquely identify software and versions at the internet level and being able to manage libraries in central repositories (local or remote ones) and to download libraries and updates on the fly if connected, like Maven do. This in order to avoid duplication of code inside several bundles/applications.
So OSGi/Java 7 + Maven-like repository for application, with local and remote repositories, and versioning is required to achieve all the benefits of manageable set of applications while reducing the size of the container/application sets.

I do hope that it will happen rather soon for mobile and enterprise-level applications.

Modularity, Versioning and Container in Java

Modularity, Versioning and Container for multi-applications is expected to come for Java 7. Specifically the JSR 277 and 294 are designed to support these features.
JSR 277 is trying to create a static module system for Java. Its offshoot, JSR 294, is focused on the VM and language support for modularity.
OSGi has been here available since sometime and get some more attentions now as there is a need to support multi-applications running inside a single Java Virtual Machine. There are three independent open source implementations (Equinox, Felix, and Knopflerfish), a specification, reference implementation, and TCK.
JSR 291, which recently passed the Final Approval Ballot, references and extends the OSGi dynamic component system.

In the paper Open Challenges in Ubiquitous and Net-Centric Computing Middleware, I described some of these technologies and how they can be useful for future ubiquitous systems distributed or no.

• Do we need to support as well the concept of distributed services between JVM, like for Jini/RIO ?



• Do we need to integrate these concept all together inside the Java platform ?


• What Java 7 will enable with these features available ?

The new version of Netbeans has been released: 6.1 !

Netbeans is the Sun open source IDE for Java, Ruby, and JavaScript.
The NetBeans IDE 6.1 release provides several features and enhancements, such as rich JavaScript editing features, support for using the Spring web framework, tighter MySQL integration, and better mechanisms for projects to share use of libraries.
Ruby/JRuby support has been enhanced with new editor quick fixes, a Ruby platform manager, fast debug support for JRuby, and many other new features and fixes.
The bean pattern and JSF CRUD generation features is back in 6.1 and were missing in the 6.0 release.
This release also provides improved performance, especially faster startup (up to 40%), lower memory consumption and improved responsiveness while working with large projects.

The future of Computer Science Employee...

In the discussion "What should be done to help lagging enrollment in Computer Science?", you may find some interesting arguments about the future of computer science employee and the problems in recruiting software specialists.

Creation of the Blog

This blog will contains all the news, thoughts about the Software world view by me.