Core JINI

While Jini promises to be a potential rival to CORBA and DCOM for general distributed development, the focus of Core Jini is on using the technology to connect peripherals to networks via Java.

Traditional problems found in distributed computing--and how Jini overcomes them--are tackled first. After this overview, there is a simple "Hello World" example, as well as a solid guide to setting up and running the Jini tools. Then the book delves into Jini specifics, starting with "discovery" (which allows devices to find Jini services on the fly). The book explains in detail how Jini services advertise themselves using both multicast and unicast protocols.

Jini services are "leased" by clients, and a section on Jini's leasing protocol shows the details from both the server side and client side. All of the requirements for a "well-behaved" Jini service are summarized, along with a complete example for a print service. Core Jini gives the working Java developer all necessary technical information to do this. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Jini's standard and custom attributes (and how to use them with JavaBeans), lookup services in Jini (plus connection scenarios), Jini remote events, the JavaSpaces API (for sharing data between distributed processes), and distributed transactions.