Open Service for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) is an open community, originally proposed in 2008, to define a set of specifications that enable integration of software development and more broadly Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Product lifecycle Management (PLM) products and services. The intention is to make life easier for software and product developers and tools vendors, by making it easier for tools to work together.

Organization

The OSLC initiative is divided up into a dozen workgroups and each workgroup develops specifications in context of a specific part of the lifecycle. For example, there are workgroups for Change Management, Quality Management, Requirements Management, Software Configuration Management and Build Automation. There is also a Core workgroup, which defines a common specification that is extended by each lifecycle workgroup.

Open specifications

OSLC is not associated with a standards body or open source organization, but OSLC is open in the sense that anybody can participate as long as they sign a patent non-assert covenant, the specifications are under Creative Commons licensing and can be freely implemented by anybody.The OSLC initiative also includes an open source project that is building an OSLC reference implementation and test suites licensed under the Apache Software License.

Status

The effort was formalized in 2009 with the formation of the Change Management workgroup and participation of individuals from Accenture, Eclipse Mylyn/Tasktop, and IBM. Since then, new workgroups have formed around other lifecycle topics and individuals representing about 30 different organizations, including Oracle, Siemens, Northrop Grumman, Tieto, and General Motors. IBM's Tivoli brand is also starting to use OSLC as an integration technology.

Technologies

The OSLC specifications build on the W3C Resource Description Framework (RDF), Linked Data and REST, enabling integration at data level via links between related resources. OSLC resources are defined in terms of RDF properties. Operations on resources are performed using HTTP. OSLC also specifies user interface techniques to enable preview, creation and selection of links.

See also

• Application Lifecycle Management
  Application Lifecycle Management
  Application Lifecycle Management is a continuous process of managing the life of an application through governance, development and maintenance...
  
  
• Product lifecycle management
  Product lifecycle management
  In industry, product lifecycle management is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal...
  
  
• Linked Data
  Linked Data
  In computing, linked data describes a method of publishing structured data so that it can be interlinked and become more useful. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP and URIs, but rather than using them to serve web pages for human readers, it extends them to share information in a...
  
  
• REST
  Rest
  Rest may refer to:* Leisure* Human relaxation* SleepRest may also refer to:* Rest , a pause in a piece of music* Rest , the relation between two observers* Rest , a 2008 album by Gregor Samsa...
  
  

External Links

• http://open-services.net - The OSLC homepage
• Eclipse Lyo proposal - Proposed Eclipse project to develop an OSLC SDK
• OSLC Primer - explains concepts of OSLC
• OSLC Tutorial - explains how to consume and provide OSLC services with lots of example code