1. Managing enterprise client
deployment with p2
Thomas Kratz
12.11.2010
thomas.kratz@eiswind.de

2. About me
Born 1970,
Started on a ZX81 in the early 80‘s
Doing a daytime job with JSF Frontend
(leave that uncommented)
Developing a commercial book publisher‘s software
with my own company Eiswind Software on
OSGi, Spring, Hibernate, Eclipse RCP since 2007
Casual Eclipse and Apache project contributor
(could you provide a patch ?)
Sometimes dreaming in code.

3. The scenario
• RCP Client talks to backend over HttpInvoker
• Server talks to client through XMPP
Synchronous
Remote procedure calls
Asynchronous messaging
(XMPP)

4. Client-Server compatibility
• Client and Server share domain classes and
service interfaces
Client bundles
Server bundles
Shared bundles must be
„wire compatible“

5. Definition of „wire compatible“
• OSGi versioning gives us
– major, minor, micro
– qualifier
• We defined that „wire compatible“ means
major,minor and micro must match.
• Qualifier my change, shared bundles must be
API compatible
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2
Bundle-Name: Domain Plugin
Bundle-SymbolicName: de.eiswind.mango.domain
Bundle-Version: 1.7.0.20101020

6. Uhh, we have customers
• We are not multi-tenant, so each customer
has his own server instance.
• Updating the server at customer site happens
at different times
• Client and server should update from single
central repository

7. Managing the client
• At login time the client first queries
the server for his OSGi version of the
shared bundles
• Then he looks in the repo for
updates that match the servers
version in terms of „wire
compatible“

8. Managing the client (2)
• If, at login time, server and client
version do not match, Workbench
starts up for getting the update
with user interface disabled.
• If an update is available, but would
need server upgrade first, it is
ignored.

9. The solution: p2 queries
• We know the servers shared Bundle version,
so we do a query for compatible updates of
the product Installable Unit:
IQueryable<IInstallableUnit> queryable =
provisioningContext.getMetadata(new NullProgressMonitor());
IQueryResult<IInstallableUnit> matches =
queryable.query(
QueryUtil.createIUQuery("de.eiswind.mango.client.core.mango",
new VersionRange(Version.createOSGi(major, minor, micro), true,
Version.createOSGi(major, minor, micro + 1), false)),
new NullProgressMonitor());

10. Building the Update
• The QueryResult gives us all compatible IU‘s
from the repository. We pick the latest and
construct an update:
IQueryResult<IInstallableUnit> allIUFromRepo =
getAllInstallableUnitFromRepository(provisioningContext);
List<IInstallableUnit> units = new ArrayList<IInstallableUnit>();
for (Iterator<IInstallableUnit> it = allIUFromRepo.iterator(); it.hasNext();) {
newIUFromRepo = it.next();
units.add(newIUFromRepo);
}
// check if something is available at all omitted here
Collections.sort(units);
// get the latest matching update
newIUFromRepo = units.get(units.size() - 1);

11. The UpdateOperation
// now we must ensure that we don‘t get updates we
// do not want
Update update = new Update(oldIUFromProfile, newIUFromRepo);
ProvisioningSession session = new ProvisioningSession(agent);
final UpdateOperation operation = new UpdateOperation(session);
status = operation.resolveModal(sub.newChild(100));
// check status omitted here
operation.setSelectedUpdates(new Update[0]);
for (Update available : operation.getPossibleUpdates()) {
if (available.equals(update)) {
log(IStatus.INFO, "Update matches available: " + update, null);
selected[0] = available;
operation.setSelectedUpdates(selected);
}
// now run the ProvisioningJob

12. Coming up: The server
• Currently server is beeing ported to the virgo
runtime
• Virgo doesn‘t work with p2 yet, but knows the
concept of a „remote repository“

13. Server updates
P2 and virgo repo on eiswind.de
Server at Customer BServer at Customer A
Pick up virgo
repository updates

14. The update cycle
Server at Customer A
P2 and virgo repo on eiswind.de
1)
2) Client recognizes server update
3) Client pulls update from p2 repo

15. Thanks for listening
• If you‘d like to see the full update code
example, just ask.
• You can reach me on
• thomas.kratz@eiswind.de
• http://www.eiswind.de