Server-Side Eclipse – die dynamische Server-Plattform auf Basis von OSGi

The Eclipse platform is a great success on the client-side. Plug-ins and Extension Points based on the OSGi runtime are solid architectural building blocks. Server-side Eclipse (SSE) wants to achieve the same success on the server-side.

Today you can find a plug-in for almost every purpose to install into your Eclipse SDK. The vision of SSE is to have the same amount of plug-ins available for servers. Imagine extending your server with additional functionality by installing some extra bundles, e.g. a log analyzer for your HTTP service.

Eclipse-based servers use the OSGi runtime which provides a service abstraction. OSGi services map well to services in SOA. OSGi is a dynamic environment where bundles can be installed, started, stopped and uninstalled at runtime.

Server-side Eclipse can be used to develop dynamic applications running 24/7 where bundles can be updated without causing down times. Another scenario are servers running multiple versions of a service at the same time.

In our presentation we give an overview of the current state of Server-Side Eclipse and Eclipse projects using SSE. Based on our experiences we speak about the limitations and the potential of the SSE technology.

The talk includes several code examples and live demos.

Frank and Jochen are the chairs for SSE Symposium at Eclipse Summit Europe 2006 and 2007.