Enhancing OSGi with explicit, vendor independent extra-functional properties

Abstract

Current industry and research organisations invest considerable effort to adopt component based programming which is promising rapid development process. Several issues, however, hinder its wider adoption. One of them is the practical use of extra-functional properties (EFPs) that research community aims at integrating to component composition but for which industrial applications are still rare. When extra-functional properties are not considered or mis-interpreted, inconsistencies in application performance, security, reliability, etc. can result at run-time. As a possible solution we have proposed a general extra-functional properties system called EFFCC. In this paper we show how it can be applied to an industrial component model, namely the OSGi framework. This work analyses OSGi from the extra-functional properties viewpoint and shows how it can be enhanced by EFPs, expressed as OSGi capabilities. The proposed benefits of the presented approach are seamless integration of such properties into an existing framework and consistency of their interpretation among different vendors. This should support easier adoption of extra-functional properties in practice. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.