HiveMind 1.0

HiveMind project is a services and configuration microkernel:
- Services: HiveMind services are POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) that can be easily accessed and combined. Each service ideally defines a Java interface it implements (but this is no longer mandatory). HiveMind takes care of instantiating and configuring each service just as necessary. HiveMind lets services collaborate with each other via dependency injection.
- Configuration: HiveMind allows you to provide complex configuration data to your services in a format you define. HiveMind will integrate the contributions of such data from multiple modules and convert it all into data objects for you. HiveMind configurations allow for powerful, data-driven solutions which combine seemlessly with the service architecture.
- Microkernel: HiveMind is a framework for creating applications, not an application, or even an application server, itself. The core of HiveMind is the startup logic that knows how to parse and understand the module deployment descriptors, and use that information to instantiate and initialize all those services and configurations.
In HiveMind, a service is an implementation of a Java interface. Unlike other SOAs (Service Oriented Architectures, such as a SOAP, or EJBs), HiveMind is explicitly about combining Java code within a single JVM. HiveMind uses a descriptor to describe different services, their lifecycles, and how they are combined. HiveMind takes care of thread-safe, just-in-time creation of singleton service objects so your code doesnt have to.
HiveMind represents a generous donation of code to the Apache Software Foundation by WebCT.
HiveMind originated from internal requirements for a flexible, loosely-coupled configuration management and services framework for WebCTs industry-leading flagship enterprise e-learning product, Vista.
Several individuals in WebCTs research and development team, in addition to Howard Lewis Ship, contributed to the requirements and concepts behind HiveMinds initial set of functionality. These include Martin Bayly, Diane Bennett, Bill Bilic, Michael Kerr, Prashant Nayak, Bill Richard and Ajay Sharda. HiveMind is already in use as a significant part of Vista.