Chapter 12. The Blueprint specification
This chapter covers
- Standardizing Spring DM though the Blueprint specification
- Discussing the Blueprint terminology
- Comparing Spring DM and Blueprint
- Using Blueprint
In the previous chapter, we looked at the OSGi compendium services and how they can be accessed from Spring DM. One of the most recent additions to the compendium services (introduced in OSGi 4.2) is the Blueprint Service specification (RFC 124)—a topic of great interest to us because it represents the standardization of Spring DM. In this chapter we’ll describe and discuss the Blueprint specification and show how you can use it both standalone and together with Spring DM.
Because it’s the reference implementation, Spring DM 2.0 fully supports Blueprint, and it’s likely that many customers will choose to use Blueprint instead of Spring DM because of its standard status. Fortunately Blueprint isn’t very different from Spring DM—all the concepts are the same. In fact, Blueprint can be thought of as a dialect of the Spring DM language, so you should have no trouble at all understanding and using it.
So without more ado, let’s dive right in!