Working with Features

Each enterprise middleware product is a collection of reusable software units called features. Similarly, WSO2 ESB consists of a collection of features where a single feature is a list of components and/or other features.

Provisioning software is the act of placing an individual software application or a complete software stack onto a target system. Provisioning WSO2 ESB involves installing/updating/uninstalling features to/from the Carbon base platform on top of which the entire WSO2 product stack is developed. It is also possible to easily revert to a previous feature configuration using the provisioning support.

Features can be easily installed to any WSO2 product using the WSO2 Carbon Feature Manager that comes with the product. Feature manager is powered by Equinox P2 and allows you to connect to a remote or local P2 repository and get any feature installed into the product's runtime.

P2 can be used as a provisioning platform for any OSGi-based application. P2 has enabled easy provisioning capabilities in WSO2 Carbon, thereby increasing the user-friendliness in building customized SOA products using the Carbon platform. Users can download the WSO2 Carbon framework or any other WSO2 product and extend them by simply installing various features. The WSO2 Feature Manager provides a convenient user interface to perform common provisioning operations. For more information on how P2 works with WSO2 Carbon products, see http://wso2.com/projects/carbon/provisioning-wso2-carbon-with-equinox-p2.

For information on working with features in WSO2 ESB, see the following topics: