(Nikkei BP Group)
(No.1 High Tech News Site in Japanese)
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| [Java Computing EXPO '98] Japan's Hardware Vendors Use Java JINI to Develop Devices
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July 20, 1998 (TOKYO) -- Hardware vendors in Japan are using the Java-based
JINI distributed environment to develop devices.
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John Gage, chief scientist of Sun Microsystems Inc., explained JINI's
merits during a keynote speech at Java Computing Expo '98 for Enterprise,
an exhibition held in Tokyo from July 15-17.
At a press conference following the keynote, Gage disclosed that Java-based
distributed environment, JINI, has been already adopted by 15 vendors,
including Japanese companies. Their development with JINI is now ongoing.
Gage said of JINI's merits: "The core size of JINI is only 25KB. It is
small enough to be mounted on any devices. We haven't figured how vast
the potential of JINI is yet. JINI is available in a wider range of
fields, for instance, it is suitable for a plug-and-play function which
enables downloading a device driver module of a hard disk drive from
a Web site managed by a vendor of the disk drive."
"Images can be smoothly transmitted to a hard disk in the environment
of JINI. Programs in JINI know how to handle each device," Gage said.
"Objects can interact with one another through a simple protocol called
Discovering Protocol."
Noteworthy in the JINI concept is that everyone can obtain source code
without a fee. This "open source" strategy contributes to diffusion
of Linux (a free operating system compatible with UNIX) and free provision
of source code of Netscape Communicator, which makes the strategy a
focus of a market, he said.
Sun Microsystems continues to provide the JINI source code free of charge.
This policy corporations with a tight budget or even students a chance
to get JINI source code and apply it to making their own programs. Gage
told reporters that the real source code will be out in 60 days or so.
Related story: Java
Distributed Environment Applications Highlighted
(Nikkei Java Review)
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