Author/s : Jeff McAffer, Paul Vanderlei & Simon Archer
Publisher : Addison-Wesley Professional
Category : Miscellaneous Java
Review by : Jeanne Boyarsky
Rating : 8 horseshoes
"OSGi and Equinox" is the first "Eclipse Series" book I have read. It has three parts.
The first part is an introduction. The brief history shows how OSGI came to be and the benefits. It had excellent visuals to see the concepts being presented.
The second part is an extended tutorial to create the TOAST application from scratch. The tutorial assumes you've never used Eclipse before so it was a bit slow to get started. I would have liked seeing how to create a project/class as an appendix. There were a ton of
IDE screenshots so I certainly felt like I was doing the tutorial with the author. That style got a little dry/repetitive; maybe because I wasn't following along on a computer. Many concepts were covered and there were good tips and warnings to the reader. I was a bit puzzled why the tests are using EasyMock with
Java 5 and
JUnit 4. I'll be sure to ask the author when he is at JavaRanch the week of April 20th.
The third part is "deep dives" into specific concepts. This section was less tutorial-y and I liked it better. It includes
patterns, the lifecycle and crosscutting concerns. There is also an "other"/kitchen sink chapter that contains numerous tips and tracks.
Overall, I did learn a lot from the book. If you are looking to learn OSGi/Equinox, I think it is good to read.
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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in
exchange for writing this review on behalf of JavaRanch.