The feature pack for OSGi Applications and JPA 2.0 delivers a pre-integrated application framework to help increase developer productivity and time to value. Through this feature pack, organizations can realize many of the benefits found in other non-standard open source frameworks in a standardized, WebSphere Application Server integrated fashion. Specifically, the feature pack delivers open community and standards-based implementations of the OSGi Blueprint Container specification and Java EE 6 JPA 2.0 along with the ability, optionally, to assemble, deploy, and manage applications as a collection of versioned OSGi bundles. Common Web application requirements for modular design, simple POJO(2)-based components and efficient data access can be addressed by using both the OSGi applications and JPA 2.0 components of this feature pack together. Alternatively, for greatest flexibility, the two features may be installed and used independently.
OSGi Applications Overview
Since its founding in 1999, the OSGi Alliance was, is now, and will be in the future, associated with delivering standards that solve application development complexity, extensibility, and maintenance challenges. With the recent publication of the OSGi Service Platform Enterprise Specification Release 4, Version 4.2 now addresses enterprise application developers as well. This feature pack adds open standards support for this ground breaking set of OSGi specifications to our proven Java EE runtime.
Apache Aries is an open community project that brings the modularity, dynamism, and versioning of the OSGi service platform to enterprise application developers through implementation of the OSGi Alliance EEG specifications. Apache Aries delivers a simple-to-use, lightweight programming model for Web applications that combines the standard Blueprint component model with familiar Java enterprise technologies.
The feature pack for OSGi Applications and JPA 2.0 delivers tight integration of Apache Aries with WebSphere Application Server, leveraging WebSphere platform enterprise qualities of service to provide a complete and robust enterprise server for modular Web applications
Highlights of the OSGi applications support delivered in the feature pack include:
OSGi Release 4 Version 4.2 Blueprint component model for declarative assembly, and simplified unit test
Extensions to the Blueprint component model for declarative transactions, container-managed JPA, and resource reference configuration
Isolated enterprise applications composed of multiple, versioned bundles with dynamic life cycle
Integrated bundle repository and ability to configure the location of external repositories to support application provisioning
Module sharing between applications
Module versioning within and between applications
Integrated administration of application bundles
Federation of lookup mechanisms between local JNDI and the OSGi service registry
Support for deploying existing Web Application Archives (WARs) as OSGi Web application bundles
JPA 2.0 overview
Object-relational persistence is a key developer requirement for many application developer scenarios. JPA is the Java EE standard for object-relational persistence and was first introduced as part of Java EE 5. As part of the Java EE 6 standards, JPA 2.0 (JSR-317) updates object-relational capabilities with important developer APIs and enhancements. The WebSphere Application Server JPA implementation is based on Apache OpenJPA, a leading open source Java persistence framework. This feature pack provides the IBM implementation of the JPA 2.0 specification based on Apache OpenJPA 2.0, plus IBM enhancements to benefit integration with WebSphere Application Server. Apache OpenJPA 2.0 includes improvements and benefits over previous releases and even beyond the JPA 2.0 specification.
Highlights of the JPA 2.0 implementation delivered in the feature pack include:
Java EE 6, JPA 2.0 (Java Specification Request 317) specification compliant implementation
Important new JPA 2.0 standards-based features to help improve developer time to value
Achieve new levels of application performance with WebSphere Application Server V7(1)
Query language (JPQL) extensions and improvements
Programmatic control of database access optimizations - fetch groups, fetch plans, and access intents
Enhanced integration with WebSphere eXtreme Scale in order to help improve data access performance
