Sun Microsystems, Inc. will post the specifications for its Jini Java component services on its Web site by Monday, company officials today said. The vendor is hoping that making Jini publicly available will drive its adoption by hardware manufacturers.
Jini, first demonstrated by Sun officials at the JavaOne developers conference in San Francisco in March of this year, is a specification derived by the vendor, to facilitate the linking together of distributed devices over a network using a Java object repository also developed by Sun known as JavaSpaces.
According to Sun officials, the company has been very busy of late evangelizing Jini to a large number of hardware vendors in the hope that they will incorporate the Jini source code into their devices, such as hard drives, printers and other peripherals.
Within roughly 60 days, Sun will make the Jini source code available for download from its Web site, company officials said.
The Jini specification defines new Java components that enable devices on a network to be represented as "services" or objects, which are then accessible by other devices connected to the same network.
A Jini service or object defines both a device's function and how another device can connect to it over a network. In fact, third-party vendors could conceivably create a single Jini service on a network by snapping together a composite of separate pieces of hardware, applications and services, Sun officials said.
Word of Sun's JavaSpaces project initially surfaced in August of last year, with company officials referring to a JavaSpace as an object repository which enables software applications and hardware to share work and results over a distributed environment.
RELATED LINKS
about Jini.
A FAQ about JavaSpaces
from Sun.
Sun experimenting with possible Internet OS
IDG News Service, 7/15/98
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