[udig-devel] Server-side uDig

[Aleksander Bandelj]

I think uDig and technologies it builds on constitute a really nice 
platform for client and server side GIS, so I started experimenting with 
server part. So far, I am able to run uDig rendering headless inside 
Eclipse Equinox OSGI container. It requires no modifications to uDig and 
is also reasonably easy for those familiar with Eclipse PDE. You need 
eclipse 3.2 and plugins from equinox incubator:

org.eclipse.equinox.http.registry
org.eclipse.equinox.servlet.bridge.http
org.eclipse.equinox.jetty.http

Then you simply create Equinox launch configuration which includes these 
bundles and a servlet bundle which registers a servlet on http registry 
extension point:

 <extension
         point="org.eclipse.equinox.http.registry.servlets">
         <servlet
               alias="/udig"
               class="test.UdigServlet"
               load-on-startup="true"/>
   </extension>

I've attached a braindead sample servlet in case somebody is interested.

The only problem I've encountered (lost a hour tracking it down) was 
with UiPlugin activator. It requires net.refractions.udig plugin to 
parse uDig version and fails with NullPointerException if not present, 
but net.refractions.udig for some reason isn't available (maybe because 
it exports no classes, so Lazy-Start doesn't work). Anyway, this is now 
http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/UDIG-957

(I think net.refractions.udig.ui should depend on net.refractions.udig, 
not the opposite. If net.refractions.udig is a central point for version 
and property information, on which other bundles depend, this dependency 
should be evident in bundle manifest.)

There is also a rather interesting Rich Server Platform proposal, which 
talks of server-side Eclipse workbench and OSGI inside web applications:

http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/rsp/

(Note that they are releasing updated demo and tutorial soon)
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