Overview

Jini[tm] network technology provides a simple infrastructure for delivering services in a network and for creating spontaneous interaction between programs that use these services regardless of their hardware/software implementation.

Any kind of network made up of services (applications, databases, servers, devices, information systems, mobile appliances, storage, printers, etc.) and clients (requesters of services) of those services can be easily assembled, disassembled, and maintained on the network using Jini Technology. Services can be added or removed from the network, and new clients can find existing services - all without administration.

Technology

Technology Advantage
Sun's technologies, such as Jini technology, are truly open to the marketplace, allowing more widespread innovation and providing an open standards based environment for developers, service providers and content creators alike.

Operational Advantage
Jini technology enables open end-to-end solutions for creating dynamically networked products, services, and applications that scale from device to the enterprise.

Competitive Advantage
Jini technology solutions enable developers, service providers and content creators to gain a competitive business advantage and capitalize on new revenue streams in the service-driven network, by rapidly and cost effectively developing and deploying compelling new applications and services for their customers worldwide.

Network Evolution

Over the last quarter century, network technology has evolved rapidly and in some unexpected ways. Client/server and multi-tier models operating within a single business enterprise have given way to an Internet/Web environment where services are provided by nodes scattered over a far-flung network.

Today, the next generation of network interaction is emerging that will place unprecedented demands upon existing network technologies and architectures. For example, participants in one network will need to directly access and use the services provided by participants in another network. It is in this network environment - one of mind-numbing complexity driven by geometric increases in scale, rate of change, and multiplicity of participant interactions - that the simplicity of the Jini[tm] architecture clearly wins.

How Jini Technology Works

By using objects that move around the network, the Jini architecture makes each service, as well as the entire network of services, adaptable to changes in the network. The Jini architecture specifies a way for clients and services to find each other on the network and to work together to get a task accomplished. Service providers supply clients with portable Java technology-based objects that give the client access to the service. This network interaction can use any type of networking technology such as RMI, CORBA, or SOAP, because the client only sees the Java technology-based object provided by the service and,subsequently, all network communication is confined to that Java object and the service from whence it came.

When a service joins a network of Jini technology-enabled services and/or devices, it advertises itself by publishing a Java technology-based object that implements the service API. This object's implementation can work in any way the service chooses. The client finds services by looking for an object that supports the API. When it gets the service's published object, it will download any code it needs in order to talk to the service, thereby learning how to talk to the particular service implementation via the API. The programmer who implements the service chooses how to translate an API request into bits on the wire using RMI, CORBA, XML, or a private protocol.




Jini[tm] Network Technology