A service-layer diagnostic approach for the OSGi framework

The open service gateway initiative (OSGi) framework is to provide an open environment for home services, which can be deployed by different service providers. However, currently there is no total solution for the OSGi framework to diagnose and recover from unexpected faults, especially those generated by resource conflicts between services, which would require user intervention. This paper summarizes the requirements for diagnosis in the open service platform and proposes an integrated approach to detect service conflict faults, handle general exceptions, and diagnose service errors on OSGi platforms. By providing user friendly diagnosis messages, and suggestions to fix exceptions, users can operate home gateways without a heavy learning burden, and service providers can reduce the overhead associated with user requests for technical support. The implementation is packaged as a service bundle running on the service layer of the OSGi platform. This is the first attempt to diagnose and handle the service conflicts on the OSGi platform during runtime.