Techne.Launcher

Purpose and Scope

The Techne.Launcher component is an all-purpose utility for launching standard frameworks such as those based on OSGi. A framework is defined as a component library that focuses primarily on "how to do things" rather than "what things are required." In other words, a framework enforces a set of practices in order to fully utilize the benefits of its library. There exists quite a large of frameworks in Java and other languages. Aside from OSGi, other examples of frameworks are SCA, Spring, and Struts. Since a component can include other components, so similarly a framework can include other frameworks (just think of Spring-OSGi). Following the principle of "switchability" (meaning, the ability to switch components at runtime), Techne.Launcher provides a generic capability for adapting various frameworks by providing conventional APIs of its own.

Some of its important features are:

• Ability to detect startup framework events.

• Automatically selects a framework using a context-driven approach, then starting one that best fits a defined set of criteria (classpath, jars, bundles, etc.).

• Enables elegant transitioning of frameworks to minimize or even eliminate client downtime.

• Selects and registers the appropriate set of framework services to the container.