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Sun lets Jini Starter Kit 1.1 out of the bottle

<em>JavaWorld</em> author Frank Sommers talks with Jini architect Jim

By Frank Sommers, JavaWorld.com, 12/08/00

This year is shaping up as a success for Jini technology. Jini licensees now exceed 50,000, and the technology is deploying everywhere from automobiles to enterprise software systems. The upcoming Fifth Jini Community Meeting, scheduled for December 11-12 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, has received a remarkable response. The meeting reached its capacity well in advance, and excess registrations spilled over onto a waiting list. For developers, the year's most important event may have been the October release of the 1.1 version of the Jini Starter Kit (JSK).

Jim Waldo and his team at Sun have been instrumental in this success story. Waldo has been investigating the use of Java technology for distributed computing and persistence for the past 6 years. Waldo is also an adjunct faculty member at Harvard University in the department of engineering and applied sciences, where he teaches distributed computing.

Prior to joining the Java group, Waldo was a principal investigator for Sun Microsystems Laboratories; he did research in the areas of object-oriented programming and systems, distributed computing, and user environments. Before joining Sun, Waldo spent 8 years at Apollo Computer and Hewlett-Packard working in the areas of distributed object systems, user interfaces, class libraries, text, and internationalization. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

JavaWorld: What's new in the Jini Starter Kit 1.1?

Jim Waldo: First, it's important to realize that the 1.1 release is an addition to Jini, as opposed to a change in Jini. All of the interfaces and services that were available in the first release are still available and unchanged. Anything that used to run as a Jini service will still run as a Jini service.

For the 1.1 release, we put together some utility classes to make writing a Jini service or a Jini client easier. Some of these were actually included in the first Jini release. We tried to apply to them the same careful design effort that we put in the earlier interfaces that define Jini as whole, mainly to make these utilities easier to use and more robust. Mostly, people can use these utility classes -- yet they don't have to -- to write their services. We make a distinction between utilities, which are classes, and services that are real Jini services living out on the network. This time around, we put in a lease-renewal service, a lookup discovery service, and an event mailbox.

JavaWorld: What other utilities and services are you planning to introduce in a future version of the JSK?

Jim Waldo: One of these items might be a service used to send events. A number of people have been looking at a utility class that will grant leases, to make the whole leasing model somewhat simpler. Another addition will be a set of utilities or tools that will make it easier to configure a Jini network. Also, we will be adding services and utilities that will help you get your classpath right, and your code-base right.

JavaWorld: Will there be any security-related services?

Jim Waldo: Security is a rather large and hairy subject. Right now, Bob Scheifler is working on a security JSR (Java Specification Request) for basic RMI. The RMI security will form the semantic model for security in Jini, in the same way that RMI forms the semantic model for communication in Jini. You don't have to use RMI, but whatever you use has to preserve the meanings that RMI gives you.

JavaWorld: So this security mechanism will be an abstraction that one could implement in different methodologies or in different protocols as well?

Jim Waldo: In some ways, it is almost like a service provider interface. It details what security means inside an RMI and Jini framework. You can have many preferences and requirements associated with clients and services -- to indicate that you must authenticate either one, for instance, or that you desire privacy but don't require it, that you want encryption on the wire, and so forth. Depending on how the community review goes, it could actually show up in the next Java release, the Merlin release.

On top of that security model, we're also talking about adding services that can be used inside a Jini network to allow a fairly simple implementation of that security model within a Jini federation. These services will be built on top of the API and on top of the semantic model; they will provide the ability to obtain certificates for authentication, for instance.

JavaWorld: This will be a security service?

Jim Waldo: Exactly. That is something that we're looking at probably for the release after the next release of Jini, which we're talking about naming Alewife. We would name the release after Alewife, Davis. We're naming them after subway stops, for those of you familiar with Boston. The Davis release is the one that would include Jini security.

JavaWorld: Besides the new utilities and services, what else is new with Jini 1.1?

Jim Waldo: We also changed the commercial licensing terms. Jini is now free.

JavaWorld: Many programmers associate device programming with Jini. Has Jini been used in applications that do not involve devices at all, such as enterprise software?

Jim Waldo: Absolutely. Everything in Jini is set up to mask how a service is implemented. There is no real distinction in Jini between hardware and software, only alternate ways of implementing an interface. We've seen a lot of this happening, where a large enterprise software service wraps itself in a little Java code, which enables this service to register itself as a Jini service and be found by other services. A company called BizTone, out of Malaysia, was the first to do this. It built an entire ERP (enterprise resource planning) package out of components that talk to each other via Jini.

JavaWorld: Those might not even be Java-based components.

Jim Waldo: Some of them may not be Java-based. All BizTone does is present a Java object that can be used by somebody else to talk to their services.

One of the very interesting things about distributing Jini the way we have, which is essentially to make it freely available on the Web, is that we don't really know who our customers are. We find out about the customers who are having trouble because they call us up and tell us. We find out about our customers who aren't having trouble when they're about to ship their product and need a commercial license. That is, when they remember they need to obtain a commercial license before they ship, which many people forget, and we actually don't mind.

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