WAR and Pieces: Breaking down monolithic web applications with Spring-DM and OSGi

About this Presentation

In this session, we'll explore modular web application development using Spring-DM and OSGi. I'll dispel the myth that OSGi is hard and show you tips and tricks that make Spring-DM and OSGi development easy.

WAR files, the workhorse standard deployment unit for Java web applications, has been looking a little portly for a long time. Most WAR files contain not only servlets and JSPs, but are usually well-endowed with static content (such as CSS, JavaScript, and images), middle and backend support classes, and a WEB-INF/lib directory chock-full of third party libraries. Even simple web applications can carry around several megabytes worth of baggage.

Monolithic WAR files present some practical issues, including:

• Every WAR file carries its own copy of embedded libraries, increasing the footprint of each web application.
• Parallel development of application modules is hindered, as all modules ultimately are deployed as a single unit.
• Application modularity itself is not enforced, allowing for tight coupling between application layers.

The solution to monolithic WAR files is rather simple: Break them into smaller, more easily managed modules. OSGi makes this possible–Spring-DM makes it easy.

Come see how to apply Spring and OSGi to be able to split web applications into pieces that can be developed, tested, deployed, and managed independent of each other.