Johnny Wey said
The book provides a great introduction to those either curious about OSGi or wanting to get more out of their existing OSGi workflow using the Spring Framework. Craig Walls, author of "Spring in Action, 2nd Edition", opens the book explaining why OSGi matters and how it can be used to enhance the modularity and maintainability of those application stacks containing multiple and complex moving parts. He not only serves up a great introduction to the technology, but also directs the reader to several tools that make OSGi development significantly easier.
In the second portion of the book, Craig throws Spring into the mix and demonstrates how the power of Spring Dependency Injection, autowiring, and the Spring MVC web framework can not only run seamlessly in an OSGi container, but also remove a large portion of the burden that OSGi's API can put on application development.
Finally, Craig spends some time describing how an actual deployment might look in a production environment using both Tomcat and Jetty and provides optimization tips that make the process as painless as possible.
The book itself is logically organized and Craig's writing style is approachable and easy to follow. All the example source code is available online, and Craig demonstrates how to install OSGi packages using both Eclipse Equinox and Apache Felix, leaving the final OSGi container decision up to the preference and requirements of the project. The sample application Craig uses to demonstrate the concepts in the book is surprisingly fun and useful, and the book contains some wonderful appendices that function as a great reference for current and future development projects. The book is a relatively quick read but surprisingly complete.
For someone looking to get the most out of OSGi or wanting to find out what all the "buzz" is about, Craig Walls' book is an outstanding choice.
Samuel A. Munoz said
It is immediately obvious none of the prior reviewers have attempted to actually USE the book. Instead they have furbished us with hollow feedback based on a quick skim of the book.
I've found an error in the published material approximately every 10 pages. In fact if you typed all the code in the book line for line NONE of it would work. There are good ideas and concepts in material, but the lessons will come at great expense to your personal time. The author inconsiderately uses you and your money as his personal Quality Assurance. Buy something else from a more thoughtful author who prides himself on the quality of his work.
P.S. - The book is maven and pax-construct heavy. Be prepared for baptismal by fire if you think your Ant background will suffice.
Derek Lane said
In addition to learning all about OSGi, you'll also be exposed to good solid software design skills in Craig Wall's latest book, "Modular Java". You'll learn services: how to call them, how to design them, how to deploy them, and to design them so they work together. Craig is direct, pragmatic, witty, and really wants the reader to "get it". He works hard to make sure you've got all the tools you need to make practical use of OSGi, whether your project is recreational or hard core enterprise scale.
If you're interested in maximizing the modularity of your Java applications, this book will help get you there quickly.
James Carman said
Overall, I really enjoyed the book. However, with all the emphasis on Maven (of which I'm a huge fan), there seems to be way too much Maven output sprinkled throughout this book. One wonders how many pages this book would be without it. Thank you for introducing me to Pax Construct! It is a great help for anyone who wants to get up and running with OSGi quickly.
B. Connor said
An absolutely clear and pragmatic book on developing Java OSGi applications and on using Pax Construct. This book begins with a well written introduction on the reasons for using OSGi in SOA applications, and then continues with a step by step approach for creating, configuring, deploying and running OSGi modules. Additionally it covers fragment bundles and Spring-DM's web extender, an exceptionally useful feature.
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