Java Application Architecture: Modularity Patterns With Examples Using Osgi, 1E

This book is beneficial to all developers; not just Java. From high level architectural diagrams on the white board, how do you create a working, flexible, maintainable application? Read this book.

This book does a great job of explaining how to design and implement modular Java applications. However, the subtitle mentions "using OSGi". The OSGi part of this book is really weak and did not contain enough detail and examples for me to go and start using OSGi. If you don't care about the OSGi part, the rest of the book is very good.

In a nutshell: This book is a thought-provoking peek into a topic that I believe will be highly influential in the next stage of evolution within software craftsmanship. The concepts presented within this book sit nicely in between the low-level 'clean code' philosophy (SOLID principles, Design Patterns, TDD etc) and the high level system/platform architecture principles (loose coupling, message orientation, event-driven systems, EIP etc). If you are serious about becoming a well-rounded developer or architect then this book is a must read.I'm a freelance software architect/developer who primarily works on the JVM stack. I'm a strong supporter of Uncle Bob's 'Clean Code' principles, and I spend a lot of time on InfoQ and various other sites learning about historical and current big-picture systems architectural approaches, but until reading this book I hadn't thought too much about what happens in the middle of all of this. As a seasoned developer I now have several formuli for designing the big-picture architecture, and am happy creating (what I think is) well crafted code. But in the Java world packaging components together for deployment can feel clumsy at times (fat JARs or stuffed WARs anyone?). This book aims to address this discomfort.The key premise of the book is 'Architecture all the way down', and although this may not make sense to you now, I have a strong suspicion that after reading the book and watching the online videos of the author (at Parleys) you'll be nodding along enthusiastically (or at least thinking that more attention should be focused in this space). Several of the principles within this book are discussed within the context of OSGi, and although I've been aware of OSGi for quite a while now, it always seemed peripheral to what I was working on, and chatting with colleagues used to produce the 'isn't that the huge frameworks used to develop app servers?' type conversations. Although the book doesn't deep-dive into OSGi per se, it did help to clear up a lot of the mystery and intended design goals for me.Just to address a few comments made by other reviewers:* I also believe that this book will be suitable for a non Java developer/architect, although the reader may have to work a bit harder to relate the content to analogous frameworks and toolkit within their chosen language/platform.* In regards to the review stating 'not a general software architecture book' I respectfully think the reviewer has missed the point of this book - 'Java Application Architecture' is clearly aimed at a well-defined and often over-looked niche within the software architecture domain, and should not be considered in isolation. It would be easy to say that a book on software design patterns is 'not a good software development book', but this is because the application of design patterns should be mixed with well-crafted code and other good design principles.In summary, if you're a fan of reading books like Uncle Bob's inspiring Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin) and the ground-breaking The Pragmatic Programmer you are going to enjoy this a lot. It may not leave you with concrete implementation details, but it will make you think a lot about how you assemble your software components.

If you want to know how a real application is packaged up, that book is for you! It is not just about patterns, it is most about principles to apply to enhance design choices during the complete life of a product production. If you want to know more on OSGi, it is not exactly the book you're looking for - except that the examples are presented with OSGi - OSGi in Action is "the" reference.Java application architecture is not only about isolated work, it is a complete and constant effort to guide teams. For consistency reasons, the software packaging should follow the agile methods applied on it. The author delivers in a great manner all the key analyse features to reach that goal. Master key conception features, that's what the author proposes here. It's big, it's simply more that enough.

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