Restlet and OSGI remote services - Part 2
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Join For FreeIn a previous posting, I described some of the advantages of integrating the Restlet framework with ECF's implementation of OSGi remote services admin (RSA).
In
this posting, I'll describe a couple of the advantages of doing this
for the service host side of things (the server that exports and
implements the remote service).
Advantages for Remote Service Host
Modular re-use of Restlet Framework. The Restlet
framework can be used to easily define remote services that are exposed
via http access methods (e.g. GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). Restlet has
become popular as a way to create and expose remote services, and all
existing uses of Restlet can immediately and modularly be reused.
Use of standardized meta-data format. One of the most valuable things about the Remote Service Admin
specification, I believe, is the standardization of the meta-data for a
remote service. This is accomplished by standardizing the EndpointDescription format for remote services. Among other advantages, standardization of this meta-data allows the easy creation of tooling for reading/parsing, as well as writing these meta-data.
Modular re-use of network discovery.
Since EndpointDescriptions are standardized, they can be easily
published and discovered via various discovery protocols. ECF's discovery API
is a transport-independent API for advertising and discovering
services, and this API is used by the ECF RSA implementation. This
allows discovery providers to be substituted...without any required
changes in the export or import of a remote service. So not only can
any of the existing ECF discovery providers be used interchangeably for
EndpointDescription discovery (Apache Zookeeper, Zeroconf/Bonjour, Service Locator Protocol, DNSSD, xml-file-based discovery),
it's also easy to create your own discovery provider, using proprietary
or open protocols for remote service discovery...to meet enterprise
requirements for security, integration, and customization.
The
conclusion, I believe, is that standardization provided by the OSGi
RS/RSA specs, along with ECF's modular, provider-based implementation
(enabled by OSGi modularity and OSGi services) makes it easy to develop,
deploy, manage, and maintain standardized remote services, without
giving up flexibility...to determine how those remote services are
discovered, accessed and managed in SOA-based systems.
Summary: Modularity and Standardization are complimentary for reuse, flexibility, and interoperability of remote services.
From http://eclipseecf.blogspot.com/2011/04/restlet-and-osgi-remote-services-part-2.html
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