FYI: Jini Backgrounder

[Rob Anderson <robert.anderson@Eng>]

[forward of something found on the net - if only my PalmPilot could do all
these things... 8^)]


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Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 08:03:32 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Jini @ Telecosm

+
The pride of place in the final evening session has been given over to
Bill Joy.  He is here to talk about Jini, Sun's new naming architecture
for identifying and interacting with an incredibly wide variety of
devices over the network. My only previous exposure to this concept has
been in last month's cover story in "Wired" magazine. I had put it
down, still not sure if it was application or operating system, dessert
topping or floor wax.

Joy says that Jini takes object programming and adds a minimal set of
extensions needed to implement remote objects. The remote object can be
a financial application or a Web browser, a printer or a toaster. When
you enable any such object with Jini, it is given the ability to
present its service interface to the network. For instance, your desk
clock may be enabled to present a "set time" and "read time" service to
any network to which it gets hooked up. All subsequent objects that are
Jini-enabled and part of the same network will be able to set or read
the time on the clock.Those new objects could be anything - a
PalmPilot, a desktop application, or a Web browser. There are no
drivers to be installed, no APIs to adhere to. There are no servers any
more, no clients.  Only services.

You can come across a service that you've never seen before, and still
use it.  You could take your PalmPilot into your den and have it be a
remote control for every device in there. Your stereo, your DVD player,
your Playstation, they could all download their service interface onto
your little screen and give you icons to control each of them.

The demo uses a bunch of little Jini-enabled devices - a Windows 98 PC,
a PDA, a disk drive, a digital camera, a network printer. They all have
jacks that let them connect to a small hub. First the Windows machine
and the disk drive are hooked up to the hub. Presto, the drive
announces its availability on the desktop screen, and offers a button
that says "save." Typing in a few words of text and clicking on this
button allows the text to be saved to the remote drive.

Now the camera gets hooked up. Its interface immediately shows up on
the desktop, offering new options. Clicking on the "snap" button takes
a photograph and displays it on the screen. Next, plug the printer in,
wait for the print service to announce itself, click the "print"
button, and get the image on a sheet. The net becomes a big, dumb
conduit for lots of intelligent devices.  Uninstalling the devices is
merely a matter of removing the network hookup.  The service removes
itself. Garbage collection is automatic. Write once, run anywhere,
install and uninstall nowhere.

Jini extensions are lightweight. The entire source, binary and
documentation fits in a 1.44M floppy. Joy says that a Java programmer
can learn to use it in three days. Indeed, as a test, he hired a
programmer fresh off the street to write his demo. It took the
programmer just two weeks.

Jini runs on the Internet, and on legacy devices. Indeed, all it needs
is a Java virtual machine, of which there are about a hundred million
in the world.  Sun is already partnering with forty of the world's
biggest consumer electronics companies to embed this capability in
everything from pagers to refrigerators.

Will it become popular? Will it scale across the entire Internet? I
don't know.  Still, Gilder, true to his nature,  did choose the right
enormous and somewhat preposterous idea to end the conference. If this
thing flies, there will come a day in the not too distant future when
the wearing down of a motor bushing in your clothes dryer will
automatically set off a repair object. Imagine your surprise when you
get a phone call from your Maytag repairman saying that he wants to
come over to fix your drier which has told him that it is going to stop
working next month.

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