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March 05, 2005
Jini and JavaSpaces
As mentioned in my previous post on Grid Computing, I have been looking at and using JavaSpaces; I have not had so much fun with a technology in quite some time. I am currently trying to work out why I haven't used it sooner.
Part of the reason, I think, is that Jini as a technology seems to have never been taken seriously by anyone accept a few people at Sun and a handful of devotees. This may be partly due to the SCSL license, but is probably mostly due to the fact that is barely mentioned anywhere on the Java site. Seriously have a dig around and tell me where it is! Sure, if you do a search, you can find some references to whitepapers, but otherwise it is know where to be seen. Another reason, I guess, is that it can be a pain in the back side to get up and running for the first time, this is because Sun doesn’t package any easy start up scripts and documentation with it.
Ok now that I have got that off my chest; why do I like Jini and in particular JavaSpaces? Because, at heart, I am a geek! Seriously now, Jini offers true network plug and play computing. It is built with the fact that networks and computers etc are unreliable. Networks, PCs, Services etc, can come and go, Jini caters for this, enabling you to build reliable and scalable Service Oriented Apps relatively easy. Throw JavaSpaces in to the mix and you get a nice simple way of de-coupling your Services.
With these technologies I can build a simple compute grid quite easily. Basically, create a Worker that pulls Entries from a JavaSpace and calls an execute method, start up 1 or more JavaSpaces, start up n workers, my simple compute grid is now up and running. Ok there is a little bit more to it than that, but you get the idea.
JavaSpaces is more than just an infrastructure for enabling Grid computing. It can be used for distributing data, de-coupling services or components (whatever you want to call them), or adding on-demand scalability to applications. I am sure there are plenty of other usages.
So what I am trying to says is; If you haven't already had a play with JavaSpaces, go and download Blitz, install it, have a play, and you might find that you are pleasantly surprised.
Last but not least; Sun - please please show some support for this technology!
Posted by Damian at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)