Analysis and

Design Method for

OSGi-based
Development
Azrinsyah Mirza Asfian,
Engineer at MIMOS
Berhad
azrinsyah.asfian@mimos.my

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 Agenda
• Introduction
• Service-Oriented Programming and OSGi
• Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Method
• The Proposed Method
– Analysis and Design Method
– Example
– Applying the Analysis and Design Method to the Case
Study
• Conclusions and Discussions

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 Introduction
• OSGi
– Open Services Gateway Initiative
– technology defined and promoted by the OSGi
Alliance
– open specifications for network delivery of managed
services to local networks and devices.
• Service-orientation and component-orientation
– requirements of having a new analysis and design
approach
– existing OOAD methodologies e.g. Booch, OMT and
UML could not be applied directly
• Proposes an analysis and design method for
OSGi-based development
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 Service-Oriented Programming
• Utilizes services as fundamental elements
• In OO, objects are building blocks while in SO,
services are its foundation blocks
• A service embedded in some component
– accepts one or more requests and returns one or
more responses
• Different from traditional methods, e.g. OO or
structural
• Remarkable traits
– Dynamism
– Substitutability
• Discover and substitute at run-time
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 Service-Oriented Interaction Pattern

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 Service-Oriented Programming
(cont.)
• OOP
– problems can be modeled in terms of objects in the
problem domain
• SOP
– problems can be modeled in terms of services which
can be implemented and provided by any other
components, based solely on the contract
• SOA
– can discover, substitute and co-ordinate service
implementations at run-time
– because components publish and use services in a
P2P manner

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 Contributions of Service-Oriented
Programming
• Fosters code reuse
• Rapid and dynamic system construction
• System upgrade without restarting and
• Independence from platforms, protocols and
deployment environments

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 OSGi Concepts
• Follows concept of SOP
• OSGi spec defines the service framework
– minimal component model
– management service for the components
– service registry
– Initially used for service gateways
– now, mainstream software devt e.g. Eclipse
subproject called Equinox
• Services (i.e., Java interfaces)
– packaged along with implementations and associated
resources into bundles
– conforms to SO interaction pattern
– deployed into the OSGi framework via WANs i.e., the
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 OSGi Concepts
• Bundle is a Java JAR file that contains
– physical unit of deployment
– can be modified and updated without requiring
system to be restarted
– some combination of Java class files
– native code
– associated resources
– manifest - meta-data describing, Java packages that
the bundle requires or provides
• Other competing SO architectures are
NetBeans module and Java Plugin Framework

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 General Object-Oriented Analysis
and Design (OOAD) Method
• Steps available in both Booch and OMT:
1. Develop a problem statement
2. Identify the classes and objects
3. Identify the semantics (or attributes) of these
classes and objects
4. Identify the relationships among these classes and
objects
5. Specify the interface and then the implementation
of these classes and objects

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 The Proposed Method
• An improvement over existing OOAD methods.
• Additional steps added:
– Extract or reuse existing OSGi services and
components (or bundles) based on their versions
– Determine dependencies between services
– Depict dynamic view of the system using service
dependencies diagram

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 Analysis and Design Method
• The resulting steps:
1. Develop a problem statement
2. Identify the services based on their intended
responsibilities
3. Identify relationships between services during
runtime.
4. Identify bundles that encapsulate a service (or
services)
5. Identify classes and objects that make up a
particular service and bundle
6. Identify the semantics (or attributes) of these
classes and objects
7. Identify the relationships among these classes and
objects
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 Example
• Illustrate how to translate software
requirements into design using OSGi
• The requirements associated with this
software:
– System must be able to display all users available
– When a user is selected, system must open a screen
that displays details of the user.
– All user information must be stored inside a
centralized database.
– System resides on a client computer which is remote
from server that stores all the user information.

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 Applying the Analysis and Design
Method – Overall System
Architectural Diagram

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 Applying the Analysis and Design
Method – Step 2
• Step 2 of the method is applied to the
requirement specifications
• Services identified:
– Profile Persistence Service: Responsible in making
used of Java persistence classes to perform Read
operation on profile of users residing in centralized
database
– User Detail Screen Service: Provides a screen to open
detail of a selected user
– Main Screen Service: Shows the screen of main
application
– Table Screen Service: Provides table screen service

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 Applying the Analysis and Design
Method – Step 3, Service
Dependencies Diagram

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 Applying the Analysis and Design
Method – Step 4 and Step 5
• Applying step 4
– results in each of the services to be in their
respective bundles
– need not to depict this
– in complex systems where a bundle can provide
more than one services, it is necessary to have a
diagram on its own
• Step 5 onwards will not be discussed here
– same steps likewise OOAD methods
– design patterns can be applied to further promote
reusability within a bundle

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 Conclusions and Discussions
• Suggested approach or step-by-step guidelines
to build software systems utilizing OSGi
• Weaknesses of this method are:
– No formal notation defined to depict relationships
between services during runtime
– System architectural diagram must be depicted
upfront
– Identification and decompositions of services largely
depends on skills and experience
• A trend moving towards MDA and MDD is
currently underway by OMG
• In the future, this method can be improved to
follow such a trend
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 THANK YOU

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 Object-Oriented Analysis and Design
(OOAD) Method
• In 1990s OO paradigm became popular
– OO languages have been the preferred programming
language
– OO paradigm has introduced attributes which solve
issues in structured paradigm
• OOAD method
– invented, likewise the structured analysis and design
method is for structured paradigm
– step-by-step guidelines for architects and developers
on designing and developing their applications
– popular methods e.g. Booch, Object Modeling
Technique (OMT) and the Unified Modeling Language
(UML)

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 OOAD Issues
• Analysis and design of OO systems only
• Resulting design is usually monolithic
• Invented in 1990s where service-oriented and
component-oriented paradigm was not
common
• An improved version of OOAD method is
required
• Do not cater for dynamism
– service required or depended on by another service
becomes unavailable
– all components must be made available for the
dependent components to be able to run or use
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– in SO, requires handling of unavailable service to be
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 OOAD Issues (cont.)
• UML does not provide formal notations to
depict services
• Structural view
– bundle diagram that shows relationships and
dependencies against other bundles
– class diagram can still be used to illustrate classes
within a package in a bundle
• Dynamic view
– OSGi bundle together with services that it offers to
other services residing in other bundles
– ensure that system being designed has all required
services to be resolved and available during runtime

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 OOAD Issues (cont.)
• OSGi attributes
– possibility that different versions of same package
providing a service to be made available
– different versions of this package might be providing
same service with different behaviours
– Different parts of system might be using different
versions of same package
• Dynamic view of entire system is depicted by
service dependencies diagram
• Version of a service must be specified so that
dependent services can be connected
• Reactive approach in system development do
exists
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 OOAD Method (cont.)
• Booch and OMT clearly specify the steps
required to be taken when converting system
requirements into a software design
• UML
– does not specify the exact method
– only specify the notations and type of diagrams
available to provide different architectural views of a
software system
– designed to be compatible with those methods
– methods have been recast to take advantage of the
new notations available

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