Kirk Knoernschild

Modularity plays an important role in software architecture. It fills a gap that has existed since we began developing enterprise software systems in Java. This chapter discusses that gap and explores how modularity is an important intermediary technology that fills that gap. Defining Architecture There are numerous definitions of architecture. But within each lies a common theme and some key phrases. Here are a few of the definitions. From Booch, Rumbaugh, and Jacobson (1999): An architecture is the set of significant decisions about the organization of a software system, the selection of the structural elements and their interfaces by which the system is composed, together with their behavior as specified in the collaborations among those elements, the composition of these structural elements and behavioral elements into progressively larger subsystems, and the ar... (more)

Pattern Principles: The Open-Closed Principle

Design patterns exploded onto the scene when the seminal work, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, was published in 1994. Since that time, numerous books on patterns have been written, conferences devoted solely to the patterns movement have emerged, and entire Web sites are dedicated to discussions on patterns. Compound patterns that represent a combination of patterns have even been discovered. While the benefits we've realized through this movement should not be questioned, the sheer number of patterns has created a situation in which it has become... (more)

SOA in a JVM: OSGi Service Platform - A Dynamic Component System for Java

Burton Group Blog There are many forces that influence technological evolution. After a decade of building enterprise applications on the web, today’s enterprise application platform is slowly evolving to the next generation application platform. What exactly are the components of this next superplatform? Without question, as the next generation platform slowly evolves, a significant aspect will be the programming models and frameworks that team members use to develop and deploy enterprise applications. The OSGi Service Platform is a dynamic component system for Java. Succin... (more)