How should I build a modularized enterprise application which must use Spring and JPA?

Question

I'm planning to build a Java-based system to handle different business processes where each of these is a particular module in the system. Most modules would depend on some of the other modules to handle their particular business process. In other words, top modules would consume some sort of basic services provided by underlying modules. Some modules will be developed from the very beginning, but some will be added to the system later. Next, some modules will expose RESTful interfaces to handle external input / output.

To handle all this, OSGi seems appropriate, but it's a bit difficult to learn with all the different "distributions" out there (Equinox, Felix, etc.) and I'm concerned about the ease of using the Spring framework and other 3rd party libraries within each module (starting with Spring 3.2 the different jars might not come with OSGi manifests).

On top of this, I'd like a central web portal to administer all bundles, thus with each new bundle there will be a new admin section.

I need loosely coupled modules with Spring that can be hot-deployed. If you have a better solution please point me in the right direction. Thanks — Marius, Mar 20 '13 at 14:08
Hot deployment has more to do with app servers than it does OSGi. Which one do you use? — duffymo, Mar 20 '13 at 14:29

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 30 '13 at 21:30

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that's why we developed osgi-less modularity for Spring https://github.com/griddynamics/banshun Your feedback is appreciated!

answered Aug 30 '13 at 21:30

mkhludnev

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '13 at 14:12

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Why do you need OSGi? Why not use a Web Server like Tomcat, and deploy your application as a war? You can deploy it on multiple servers in a cluster, and your application can scale on and on.

answered Mar 20 '13 at 14:12

Amir Kost

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Having just a war file I cannot add other code like other jars without stopping the server, adding the code and rebuilding the war file. I want something dynamical. I have updated my question. – Marius Mar 20 '13 at 14:21

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 20 '13 at 15:30

Why do you need Spring? It has become incredibly coupled. And it has a complexity that find quite useless since OSGi applications tend to be built from small components communicating through services; voiding most of the advantages of the Spring wiring model which assumes it is central.

And hard to configure is a strange remark, OSGi is excellent configuration support. It is just different than what you're used to.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 22 '13 at 11:58

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Instead of using spring, why not using OSGi Blueprint it'll give you an "easy" transition from Spring to OSGi.

answered Mar 22 '13 at 11:58

Achim Nierbeck

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How should I build a modularized enterprise application which must use Spring and JPA?

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