Eclipse Equinox OSGi R4 on the Server

Finally got a chance to look a the the Eclispe Equinox project. This is an implementation of OSGi R4. OSGi as many people have mentioned over the last couple of years is becoming the dominant model for component life-cycle management (okay lets not mention the debacle of JSR 277). Having used earlier versions of OSGi during Eclipse plugin programming, I really do like the model. It's clean and relatively simple.

What is increasingly apparent is how OSGi is set to become the dominant force on the Server (see this slideset). Why is this? Essentially it is because the days of manually upgrading a server are coming to an end. The cycle where you take a server down, install the newest version and migrate applications, really is looking out of date. Software as a Service (SaaS) is the disruptive force transforming development. However, not all applications (currently categorized as client or server-side) will be delivered as SaaS, but at the very least these applications will need two things: an upgrade capability and the ability to run multiple versions of components together. OSGi  provides both.