| The Philosophy Behind Jini Technology
| The overriding design goal of Jini technology was simplicity. Bill Joy, Jini’s co-inventor and the man who gave us the UNIX® operating system, said “We knew whatever we did had to be technically simple, because it’s hard to write programs, and even harder to write distributed programs. What we wanted was a very simple communications mechanism that would let the distributed system work.”
| So, on the premise that less is more, Joy and his team created a remarkably small piece of Java code — only 35,000 lines — that laid down the law for object-oriented communication among devices on a network. The Jini technology team built on the Remote Method Invocation (RMI) technology of the Java platform, extending objects to remote resources, and providing an instant on facility for access to those resources.
| Another key design goal was fail-safe network interaction. The design team ensured that Jini communities could restore state to devices after network failures or other problems, and that the networks were resilient — adaptable to change and able to accommodate additions or deletions from the community of services and resources. This design approach also enabled creation of impromptu communities of devices and resources, with unprecedented ability to be distributed.
| And the concept of community drove every aspect of the design. Jini technology had to be easy to access, easy to use, and inclusive to every type of device and service. Importantly, Jini technology makes it easy to make older devices current, helping to preserve their investment Existing devices can become Jini community members, while future Jini devices will deliver an ever broadening array of Jini technology-enabled features.