In Pieces: Modular Java with OSGi, Spring, and Pax

Is your application modular?

Sure, you may have broken your application into sub projects and build each individually. Maybe you're using techniques such as dependency injection and interface-driven design to decouple the parts of your application. But can you update any of of those modules at runtime without redeploying or even restarting the whole application? If your application is so modular, why did you deploy it as one big monolithic WAR file?

Modularity affords several benefits, including changeability, comprehensibility, parallel development, greater testability, and reuse (to name a few). Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to create modular applications, the vast majority of projects only achieve a marginal amount of modularization.

Forthcoming improvements to the Java language and platform promise to improve Java's modular capability. But why wait? Can't we achieve modularity in today's Java?

In this session, we'll see how OSGi, Spring, and a handy collection of tools known as Pax offer modularity for Java right now. We'll see how to build functionality into highly-cohesive and loosely-coupled modules and then assemble them into a larger application.

About Craig Walls

Craig Walls is a Principal Engineer, Java Champion, Alexa Champion, and the author of Spring AI in Action, Spring in Action, and Build Talking Apps. He's a zealous promoter of the Spring Framework, speaking frequently at local user groups and conferences and writing about Spring. When he's not slinging code, Craig is planning his next trip to Disney World or Disneyland and spending as much time as he can with his wife, two daughters, 1 bird and 2 dogs.

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