13.2. OSGi

OSGi is a dynamic module system for declarative services. Each jar in OSGi is called a bundle and has its own classloader. Each bundle specifies the packages it exports (makes publicly available) and which packages it imports (external dependencies). OSGi will use this information to wire the classloaders of different bundles together; the key distinction is you don't specify what bundle you depend on or have a single monolithic classpath; instead, you specify your package import and version, and OSGi attempts to satisfy this from the available bundles.
All core jBPM jars (and core dependencies) are OSGi-enabled. That means that they contain MANIFEST.MF files (in the META-INF directory) that describe their dependencies. These manifest files are automatically generated by the build, and you can plug these jars directly into an OSGi environment.
The following jBPM jars are OGSi-enabled:
  • jbpm-flow
  • jbpm-flow-builder
  • jbpm-bpmn2
The example below looks up the necessary services in an OSGi environment using the service registry and creates a session that can then be used to start processes, signal events, etc.

Example 13.1. OSGi Example

ServiceReference serviceRef = bundleContext.getServiceReference( ServiceRegistry.class.getName() );
ServiceRegistry registry = (ServiceRegistry) bundleContext.getService( serviceRef );

KnowledgeBuilderFactoryService knowledgeBuilderFactoryService = registry.get( KnowledgeBuilderFactoryService.class );
KnowledgeBaseFactoryService knowledgeBaseFactoryService = registry.get( KnowledgeBaseFactoryService.class );
ResourceFactoryService resourceFactoryService = registry.get( ResourceFactoryService.class );

KnowledgeBuilderConfiguration kbConf = knowledgeBuilderFactoryService.newKnowledgeBuilderConfiguration( null, getClass().getClassLoader() );
KnowledgeBuilder kbuilder = knowledgeBuilderFactoryService.newKnowledgeBuilder( kbConf );
kbuilder.add( resourceFactoryService.newClassPathResource( "MyProcess.bpmn", Dummy.class ), ResourceType.BPMN2 );

KnowledgeBaseConfiguration kbaseConf = knowledgeBaseFactoryService.newKnowledgeBaseConfiguration( null, getClass().getClassLoader() );
KnowledgeBase kbase = knowledgeBaseFactoryService.newKnowledgeBase( kbaseConf );
kbase.addKnowledgePackages( kbuilder.getKnowledgePackages() );

StatefulKnowledgeSession ksession = kbase.newStatefulKnowledgeSession();