Research Article
nOSGi: A POSIX-Compliant Native OSGi Framework
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1145/2016551.2016555, author={Steffen K\aa{}chele and J\o{}rg Domaschka and Holger Schmidt and Franz Hauck}, title={nOSGi: A POSIX-Compliant Native OSGi Framework}, proceedings={5th International ICST Conference on COMmunication System softWAre and middlewaRE}, publisher={ACM}, proceedings_a={COMSWARE}, year={2012}, month={3}, keywords={osgi posix native c++ components}, doi={10.1145/2016551.2016555} }- Steffen Kächele
Jörg Domaschka
Holger Schmidt
Franz Hauck
Year: 2012
nOSGi: A POSIX-Compliant Native OSGi Framework
COMSWARE
ACM
DOI: 10.1145/2016551.2016555
Abstract
Ubiquitous computing aims at dynamically supporting users in everyday life with applications on mobile and embedded devices in the surroundings. Component frameworks, such as OSGi, ease the dynamic management of such application software. Yet, OSGi focuses on Java, while many mobile devices only support native languages with reasonable performance. Furthermore, Java may increase the costs for devices, and even small additional costs are a relevant factor for mass-market production. This paper presents nOSGi, the first native OSGi implementation. Our C++ prototype implements the features of the OSGi R4 specification and runs without any modifications on standard POSIX systems with support for ELF binaries. It provides the core functionality of the OSGi module, life cycle and service layer in a native C++ environment. We measured considerable improvements of performance and memory consumption in comparison to common Java OSGi frameworks. Successful tests on various platforms, such as x86, x64, Sun SPARC and ARM demonstrate the portability of nOSGi.