Book review: Pro Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi Service Platforms
Z Jacek Laskowski - Wiki Projektanta Java EE
Pro Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi™ Service Platforms by Daniel Rubio (Apress, Feb 2009)
At last I could sink my teeth into the long-awaited Pro Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi™ Service Platforms and to my great surprise it wasn't very well spent time. I hoped the book was meant to introduce me to OSGi as well as Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi Service Platforms (Spring-DM in short), but there were a lot of pages about Apache Ant, Apache Ivy and SpringSource dm Server to name a few which all made me wonder if the book title reflects what's really inside. It was as much valuable in my quest for a comprehensive book about OSGi/Spring-DM as it was boring with its too many unnecessary listings of Ant's build.xml's or the additions I wouldn't call OSGi- or Spring-DM-related in any way. If I had to make a choice recommend it or not - I would certainly not, but...there's always "but"...it covered quite enough OSGi-specific topics, esp. in those commentary grey boxes that provided you don't have another book or article to read you can pick the book for some nice yet very short "Aha!" moments. The book is a mixture of very introductory material to everything which one could possibly use in a project and a few pages with a highly sophisticated explanation of the OSGi spec. In other words, you will find many interesting pages, but you will need the patience of a saint to find them.
When I received the book I couldn't hide how happy I was. It was my first book about OSGi and after reading the OSGi spec I really needed a book for more understanding of it. After all those recent books about Groovy and Grails where I could find many real-life examples of their use I thought the book would have been exactly the same. The 1st chapter "Introducing OSGi" was really great. Lots of OSGi coverage with enough details. I did like it a lot. Then, out of the sudden, came out the 2nd chapter about...Spring Framework itself. No OSGi, no Spring-DM. I didn't mean to read a book about Spring itself but Spring-DM at the very least. That is the difference. If the author aimed to fill out the book with some additional pages and to have its readers got bored, that goal was achieved. Why did the 2nd chapter take 60 pages if the 1st took only 40? It remains the mystery. The 3rd chapter was better, but just slightly better. Enough said about OSGi that I was almost convinced I'd find more in the upcoming pages. Then came the 4rd chapter about Spring-DM. But wait, there were only 30 pages about it. How came the book had Pro and Spring-DM in its title?! The chapter 5th "SpringSource dm Server" was the most boring I could find in the entire book. Although I appreciate the efforts to introduce the product to me, I couldn't accept it lasted for almost 60 pages. When you sum up how much content was about OSGi and Spring-DM vs the other stuff you will know why I'm so disappointed. Definitely too much about the other auxiliary tools. The remaining part of the book where OSGi versioning, web application development and testing were discussed was pretty much fine. Don't be fooled by the names themselves though, there're again way too much about how Spring Framework handles it and very little about how OSGi and Spring-DM tackle these tasks. Way too much.
I'd say it could have taken less pages and the book would earn better rating. All in all, if you're looking for a book about OSGi/Spring-DM I'm sure only a few chapters are for you in this book. Don't expect too much to be covered as far as these two technologies go. You'll get disappointed for sure. If only some basic coverage of these topics are acceptable you may get satisfied. I was not. The "Pro" in the title obliges the author to pay more attention to how OSGi/Spring-DM work under the covers. There's far more to be said about OSGi/Spring-DM and "Pro Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi Service Platforms" only scratched the surface of the topic. You've been warned.
