java

Instead of building monolithic applications developers prefer modular and extendible applications. Either they want to use the flexible architecture by themselfs or provide a plug-in api for other developers. In both situations one must define a modul’s purpose and it’s boundary. This module boundary is also called the service provides interface (SPI) or also a plug-in api. Java’s jar file specification describes how service providers can provide their services so that others can lookup them. This pattern is known as the service locator pattern. Since Java 1.6 the ServiceLoader has been added in order to make service provider lookup easy for application developers. Prior to Java 1.6 applications developers had to implement the lookup on their own based on the jar… Read More »A plug-in architecture implemented with java