All, If one were formulating an argument for the use of Jini and JavaSpaces versus JEE, what exactly would the decision maker be? I know you can use JEE inside Jini services, and thus they are complimenting each other in this regard, and then Jini services can be discoverable, but is that the real beauty of Jini versus EE? I guess I'm having a hard time reconciling why I should want to really dig into Jini more versus just continuing to use EE.
I can have remote code with EE, and I can have it clustered and running on multiple backends. Such a thing would only be done in Jini, per my understanding, by having a Jini front end where the code which the service executes still executes in an EE environment using stateless or stateful beans. Too, JavaSpaces seem cool from the sense of remote memory, but I'm having a hard time reconciling why JavaSpaces are any better than EJBs except for the fact that I don't really have server storage coding for the backing JavaSpaces tuples, though for any type of application to survive shutdowns and crashes data would need to be stored in some type of a permanent data store such as a database. Using a database would make sense anyways, so it seems tuples/entries are better suited to temporary distributed memory, but again, maybe wrong here and needing clarity. I know this is a Jini dev list, but I'm trying to reconcile these things to make sure I want to commit resources here as I am really interested in the automatic discovery of services and pluggability, and I'm very interested in distributed services, where service calls are distributed and clustered the server/service side so that multiple instances of a service handle different requests in the backend for a given front end, if this is possible with Jini services as part of the Jini specification. This would basically be clustered services. Something bothering me about JavaSpaces entries is they force public fields/variables. To me they should operate off the same assumptions JavaBeans and serialization operate. EJBs work this way as well. Truly those things should be compatible thus true encapsulation can take place. I haven't figured out why entries differ from the other specifications. Too, do I have the wrong idea about the River incubator? I was thinking it was to be the new place for work on Jini and JavaSpaces to progress forward, but I don't see documentation on the specifications, nor other information on the web site directly related to that type environment for progress. What is the overall goal here? The first sentence in the web site states "a project furthering the development and advancement of Jini technology". Is that the goal, and if so what does that actually mean? I notice links on the site to Jini lists/forums on java.sun.com, but I guess my understanding is that Jini and all related technologies, maybe even JSRs, are to start and end here now. What is the real story? Just a side note. I had the privilege of mentoring a NetBeans project to create easy to use functionality to get people started using JavaSpaces, tuples, and entries. It seems a good start to a larger Jini environment. This was part of some work the NB Dream Team did for the NetBeans Innovators Grant program. You can see the project from Magdalena Dukielska at: http://code.google.com/p/javaspaces-netbeans/ Thanks for any and all information, Wade ================== Wade Chandler, CCE Software Engineer and Developer, Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, NetBeans Dream Team Member, and NetBeans Board Member http://www.certified-computer-examiner.com http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NetBeansDreamTeam http://www.netbeans.org
