What has replaced JINI?

Question

It seems that JINI is pretty much an abandoned project. The latest release from the Jini.org site is from last year, and there has been no news since then.

JINI appears to be very useful to provide services in a completely distributed minor. What happened to this technology? Also what has replaced this technology?

The thread that I linked to claims that web services have replaced this technology. However, web services are strictly a client and server setup, not meant for dynamic distribution for jobs. [It can but it doesn't have the framework to do this] I find it difficult to believe that this technology just disappeared due to a lack of need.

Answer 1

Jini didn't fail due to a lack of need. There were problems with:

1. oppressive licensing when it was first released
2. all-Java solution based on RMI
3. complexity

By the time the licensing was sorted out it was too late. The moment had passed.

It's a brilliant idea, and Bill Joy's a genius, but like a lot of great technologies it simply didn't catch on. The marketplace didn't adopt it.

Jini didn't disappear. As you've noted, it's still available. The adoption rate hasn't been high because it isn't scratching anybody's itch.

Answer 2

I believe that this technology just disappeared due to a lack of need. On the simple end, web services take care of distributed needs. On the high performance end, clustering and networking with lower overhead takes care of most needs.

Answer 3

From what I see the last Jini release actually was in October 2005 (Check here). What you maybe referring to is the news entry for the Rio project on the jini.org site I guess.

The wikipedia page on Jini tells us

Originally developed by Sun, responsibility for Jini is being transferred to Apache under the project name "River"

The latest release for Apache River (2.2.1) is from last year. There still seems to be some activity on the svn repository. So maybe not completely dead but also not very much alive too.

Answer 4

Web services becoming synonymous with SOA killed the buzz for Jini. Although Jini probably was a better fit for distributed computing as well as SOA at a intra-company/enterprise level, web services and the (highly misused) XML integration was pushed by the major software providers, primarily IBM. Of all the derivatives of RMI/Jini, Javaspaces seems to have survived somewhat. Rio was certainly a early version of Cloud computing, especially when it came to dynamic provisioning. I even wonder what happened to the promise of JXTA and its co-existence with Jini.

I guess radio killed the TV star in this case :(