Building and running eXtreme Scale dynamic plug-ins for use in an OSGi environment

All eXtreme Scale plug-ins can be configured for an OSGi environment. The primary benefit of dynamic plug-ins is that they allow you to upgrade them without shutting down the grid. This allows you to evolve an application without restarting the grid container processes.

About this task

WebSphere® eXtreme Scale OSGi support allows you to deploy the product in an OSGi framework, such as Eclipse Equinox. Previously, if you wanted to update the plug-ins used by eXtreme Scale, you had to restart the Java virtual machine (JVM) to apply the new versions of the plug-ins. With the dynamic plug-in support provided by eXtreme Scale and the ability to update bundles that the OSGi framework provides, you can now update the plug-in classes without restarting the JVM. These plug-ins are exported by bundles as services. WebSphere eXtreme Scale accesses the service by looking up the OSGi registry. In the OSGi service platform, a bundle is a Java archive (JAR) file that contains Java code, resources, and a manifest that describes the bundle and its dependencies. The bundle is the unit of deployment for an application.

Procedure

  1. Build eXtreme Scale dynamic plug-ins.
  2. Configure eXtreme Scale plug-ins with OSGi Blueprint.
  3. Install and starting OSGi-enabled plug-ins.