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The
Philosophy Behind Jini Technology
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The overriding
design goal of Jini technology was simplicity. Bill Joy, Jini’s co-inventor
and the man who gave us the UNIX® operating system, said “We knew whatever we
did had to be technically simple, because it’s hard to write programs, and
even harder to write distributed programs. What we wanted was a very simple
communications mechanism that would let the distributed system work.”
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So, on the
premise that less is more, Joy and his team created a remarkably small piece
of Java code — only 35,000 lines —
that laid down the law for object-oriented communication among devices
on a network. The Jini technology team built on the Remote Method Invocation
(RMI) technology of the Java platform, extending objects to remote resources,
and providing an instant on
facility for access to those resources.
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Another key
design goal was fail-safe network interaction. The design team ensured that
Jini communities could restore state to devices after network failures or
other problems, and that the networks were resilient — adaptable to change
and able to accommodate additions or deletions from the community of services
and resources. This design approach also enabled creation of impromptu
communities of devices and resources, with unprecedented ability to be
distributed.
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And the concept
of community drove every aspect of the design. Jini technology had to be easy
to access, easy to use, and inclusive to every type of device and
service. Importantly, Jini
technology makes it easy to make older devices current, helping to preserve
their investment Existing devices can become Jini community members, while
future Jini devices will deliver an ever broadening array of Jini
technology-enabled features.
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