Comparing JavaBeans and OSGi towards an integration of two complementary component models

In today´s software engineering practices, building applications from components is the ongoing trend. What can be noticed however is that there really is not a clear consensus about the definition of components, and instead in the literature we find many definitions of what components are. This renders a comparison between component models difficult. However, it is possible to compare different component models over a list of characteristics that several authors agree should be found in a component model. In this article, Sun´s JavaBeans and the Open Services Gateway Initiative´s framework (OSGi) are compared. These are two technologies that target very different types of applications. Their study reveals, however, that both technologies cover, at different levels, a set of important features that characterize components. It also reveals that these component models are in some ways complementary. The paper concludes by giving a proposal to integrate these two technologies to obtain a more complete component model.