Remote Service Admin (RSA)

ECF 3.5 includes an full implementation of OSGi 4.2 Remote Service Admin (RSA), chapter 122 in the enterprise specification. The is a full and complete implementation of the enterprise specification chapter 122, which defines a management agent service for remote service administration. ECF's provider architecture allows the flexible, dynamic replacement of discovery and distribution modules while assuring full compliance with the OSGi specification. More on the Remote Service Admin agent and the unique features of the ECF RSA implementation is available here. See also here for more information about ECF's implementation of OSGi remote services.

ECF will soon be running it's implementation through the OSGi Test Compatibility Kit (TCK) to assure compliance with the specification. The TCK was not available to us in time for ECF 3.5, but it is available to us now, and this will allow us to assure consumers of full compliance with the specification.

Additionally, through the support of the RSA-specified endpoint description extender format (EDEF...described in section 122.8 of the enterprise specification), the new implementation obsoletes the old / RFC 119-based file-based discovery. See here for more information about this aspect of the RSA specification support.

XML-RPC Provider

ECF 3.5 includes a XML-RPC Provider. It implements the ECF Remote Services API (org.eclipse.ecf.remoteservice). The provider therefore adds the possibility to use a XML-RPC based infrastructure for the registration, distribution and use of remote services. Remote Service invocation through a proxy and/or async proxy is supported, too.

ECF4Felix

ECF4Felix allows ECF to run on the Felix framework. Until the release of ECF 3.4 ECF ran on the Equinox framework only because of unnecessary dependencies. ECF can now run on other frameworks. So far, we've tested on Felix only, but we are interested in testing on other frameworks also. If you are willing to help with testing ECF Remote Services/RSA on another framework, please send an email to the ecf-dev mailing list).

ECF Documentation Project

ECF recently started the ECF Documentation Project. This project is an approach to improve the amount and quality of the ECF documentation with the help of the committer, contributor, and consumer communities. It also aims to use of ECF for new and existing consumers.

Maven Support and other Build Infrastructure Improvements

ECF received a donation from Remain Software to buy new build hardware (many thanks to Remain Software!). This new build server is hosted by OSU labs, and is available here. ECF was able to introduce Maven releases and nightly repositories, and these are avalable here.