Welcome to SpringSource Application Platform. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the SpringSource Application Platform focusing on what it is and why you should use it.
The platform is a lightweight OSGi container that provides a complete packaged solution for developing, deploying, and managing enterprise applications. By leveraging several best-of-breed technologies and improving upon them, the platform offers a compelling solution to develop and deploy enterprise applications.
The SpringSource Application Platform is built on top of the following core technologies:
- Spring, obviously!
- Tomcat as the web container.
- Equinox as the OSGi container.
- Spring Dynamic Module for OSGi for managing OSGi.
- SpringSource Tool Suite for developing and deploying applications.
- Spring Application Management Suite for monitoring deployed applications.
Note, however, that the SpringSource Application Platform isn't just a combination of these technologies. Rather, it enhances those technologies and adds many features needed for enterprise applications.
As shown in the figure, at the core of the SpringSource Application Platform is an OSGi container running inside a standard Java Virtual Machine. The platform layer adds several services to the basic OSGi container such as serviceability and management. Tomcat (packaged as a set of OSGi bundles) runs in the OSGi container to support web applications.
The platform supports the standard self-contained WAR allowing you to use the SpringSource Application Platform as an enhanced web server. The platform also supports 'shared WAR' style that allows for a slimmer WAR file that depends on OSGi bundles instead of including JAR files inside the WAR. The Platform Archive (PAR) format is the primary deployment model that takes advantage of OSGi capability. We will explore all these formats and their suitability later in this guide.