Interoperability of Jini and other Grid systems
The new generation Grid technologies point increasingly toward the
service-oriented programming paradigm. The emerging Web services technology,
which is becoming a de facto industrial standard, makes possible the
integration of Web based services running on geographically distributed,
heterogeneous systems. This is the base architecture of the evolving Open Grid
Services Architecture (OGSA) standard as well that aims to align Web Services
with the traditional Grid technologies. An other alternative is the use of
Jini, a novel and promising piece of Java technology, designed to create
dynamic distributed object systems. Although Jini-based distributed systems
have numerous advantages, they are often criticised because of the assumption
of a homogeneous (Java) programming environment that is simply not achievable
in large scale Grid systems. In this paper, we explore the possibilities
incorporated in Jini, like protocol independence and integration of non-Java
services and clients, that make the collaboration with already existing Grid
systems possible. We also outline Jini programming methods and patterns, which
can be used to achieve the above mentioned interoperability.