Extended Service Registry for Distributed Computing Support in OSGi Architecture

This paper addresses an extended service registry to support distributed computing in OSGi architecture. The OSGi architecture allows software components to be interoperated in a centralized component runtime environment. However, it doesn´t support a distributed functionality between neighboring sub-systems. In this paper, we propose an extended service registry as a conventional service registry´s subsidiary in the OSGi architecture. This idea is implemented as RMI technology because the OSGi architecture is based on Java technology. Two approaches to accomplish our idea are used. First, we define a service as a global or a local service according to a service´s scope. The local service that runs and serves its functionality in a local machine is declared as a conventional OSGi service and registered in the service registry of a local OSGi-embedded machine. The global service that runs and serves its functionality across the machine is divided into a client module and a server module. The client part of the service code is packed as an OSGi bundle and registered into the service registry of the local OSGi-embedded machine. The server part of a service code is resided in a neighboring computer and it is also packed as an OSGi bundle. Second, in order to provide a transparent access to a registered service of the service registry, we don´t need to know the details of RMI operation. On the other hand, we define a subsidiary service module that support the conventional service access function, named as an extended service registry service and an extended RMI registry service. In the point of application developer, the global and the local service are seemed to be conventional OSGi service. The proposed idea may extend the functionality of the conventional OSGi architecture with distributed computing support