Sun’s JXTA moves steadily along

JXTA, Sun’s P2P platform, appears to be gathering some momentum. The company said recently that a million developers have downloaded the open source JXTA software. Sun is of course hoping that the JXTA networking technology makes its way into useful applications.

Version 2.0 of JXTA is standardized by Sun on its Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) platform. Developers are also working on Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), C and C# implementations of the technology.

The JXTA protocols, which have been available since 2001, have been incorporated into software tools used by several Sun customers including InView Software and Internet Access Methods.

Sun’s chief scientist Bill Joy developed JXTA as a standard set of protocols for networked devices to identify and interact with each other. JXTA has so far had limited reach, but Sun continues to hope that it will be used to network a collection of devices such as cell phones and PDAs.

According to Sun, Oracle and IBM are exploring how to use JXTA in their respective Web services software.

Smaller companies like InView have incorporated JXTA in its file sharing and collective digital workspace tools supported by its Momentum software.

Software developer, Internet Access Methods is using a software development application built with JXTA to let programmers write source code together. Developers who use the tool can see changes made by other developers.

While a nice idea, JXTA still has limited reach. This may frustrate users who may wish to use a more widely used protocol for critical shared applications.