OSGi is gaining acceptance and so LiveTribe seeks to support the standard and to augment its libraries with additional OSGI functionality where it makes sense. The SLP OSGi wrapper contains all the proper OSGi manifest information to present the vanilla SLP jar as an OSGi bundle. In addition to providing OSGi manifest information, the wrapper contains several features that take advantage of the OSGi services platform as well as integrating with the Configuration Admin and Metatype services.
The white board nature of OSGi services map nicely onto SLP service registrations. The SLP OSGi wrapper allows for services to register SLP service URLs. Here the wrapper will manage the lifetime of the SLP service URL for the OSGi services and in some cases even automatically construct an SLP URL registration. Simple default mechanisms can be used to integrate an OSGi service with this capability with out a lot of extra programming. Special service interfaces are available to provide a finer degree of control over the SLP service URL.
Bundle Integration
The SLP bundle jar wraps the core SLP jar. This gives the developer a choice between using the core SLP jar, which would not contain any OSGi code, and using the SLP bundle jar which also contains SLP service registration management as well as mechanisms for configuring SLP servers using the Configuration Admin service.
Configuration Admin Service Integration
Servers such as StandardServiceAgentServer can be started by hand using the StandardServiceAgentServer.newInstance() method. The SLP OSGi bundle also allows for the configuration of servers such as StandardServiceAgentServer using the Configuration Admin service. This can be done using one of two ways, using either ManagedService or ManagedServiceFactory interfaces. The former, which is more likely to be used, will configure a single instance of a server. The latter will configure a set of servers. Server instances will be created using the configurations in the dictionaries.
Metatype Service Integration
Services that are offered by the SLP OSGi wrapper will have their metadata recorded in XML files. This will facilitate the introspection of the SLP bundle.