A gentle introduction to OSGi

The Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) is a framework that supports the implementation of component-based, service-oriented applications in Java. The framework man- ages the life-cycle of modules (called bundles in OSGi) and provides means to publish and search for services. Moreover, it supports the dynamic install and uninstall of bundles. Nowadays, OSGi is used in many application domains, including mobile phones, embedded devices, and application servers. In this paper, we provide a gentle introduction to the basic services provided by OSGi. The presentation is guided by a simple case study, involving the implementation of a Dictionary System.