| |
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| kedwards |
Hi Joe Sam |
| jimbo |
Hi Everyone. I work at Lexmark
Intl(Laser Printers) and hope to get some of our people
looking into Jini. I have not been very successful. I
also have been working a little bit with the Jini Printer
Working Group. |
| jimbo |
I do not yet have the book, but
have it ordered. |
| jimbo |
I'll wait |
| |
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| MrKellyHOST |
Hi everyone and welcome. If you
have a question please type”?” and I will put
you in the queue. When you question is up I’ll let
you know. |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
Welcome Everyone |
| JoeSamHOST |
and thanks for joining us. |
| gorilla |
applause |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
My name is Joe Sam Shirah. |
| JoeSamHOST |
John Zukowski is currently on an
airplane and asked me to sit in, |
| JoeSamHOST |
We are fortunate to have Keith
Edwards with us for this session. |
| JoeSamHOST |
Keith is a member of the research
staff at Xerox PARC |
| JoeSamHOST |
and author of the recently
published book, Core Jini. |
| JoeSamHOST |
To find out more about him, see
John's 'In the Spotlight' interview, |
| JoeSamHOST |
on the main page at java.about.com |
| JoeSamHOST |
We welcome and expect questions,
here's how to ask: |
| JoeSamHOST |
please type ? and I will put you
in the queue. When you |
| JoeSamHOST |
We actually have a copy of Core
Jini |
| JoeSamHOST |
to give away at the end of the
session, |
| JoeSamHOST |
and we'll be looking for the
participant who asks the best question. |
| JoeSamHOST |
You must be present to win. |
| jimbo |
What kind of industries are
present here? I work for Lexmark Intl. and am having a
tough time getting manager buy in to Jini. |
| JoeSamHOST |
Jimbo, please give us just another
minute or so, |
| JoeSamHOST |
to get the basics out of the way. |
| Hugh |
Corporate Communications
(multimedia & Web) |
| kedwards |
Hi Everyone, thanks for showing
up. |
| JoeSamHOST |
Welcome Keith, we are pleased you
could join us. |
| JoeSamHOST |
looks like we have questions
already |
| JoeSamHOST |
so please go ahead |
| |
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| kedwards |
Hi Jimbo -- what are the problems
you're having getting Lexmark to buy into Jini? |
| jimbo |
We are so married to Windows that
people can not see to the future of computiing. |
| |
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| kedwards |
One of the great things (in my
opinion) about Jini is that it's actually pretty darned
easy to take a non-Jini device or service and make |
| jimbo |
Mgmt. can read all they want, but
the world is still 90% MS. |
| kedwards |
it available to a Jini community.
I think this will probably happen pretty quickly in the
Windows space. Somebody will make a lot of money |
| kedwards |
by producing a Jini/Windows
printer bridge that makes Windows printers accessible on
the network, without any need for driver or software
installation |
| jimbo |
How do you mean that someone in
windows will come up with the killer app. |
| |
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| kedwards |
I think there's a real need for a
bit of software that runs on Windows that recognizes when
a printer is attached, and then publishes |
| kedwards |
a Jini service proxy for that
printer. This would allow you to just install the printer
*once* on one machine, but then use it trivially easily
from any other machines on the network |
| |
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| jimbo |
I agree, but the words I always
hear are Plug n play fixes that. Yeah right. |
| |
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| kedwards |
Well... we know how well *that*
works! :-) |
| bruno |
? |
| kedwards |
There seem to be a lot of printer
manufacturers who are among the Jini licensees. So maybe
competitive pressure will convince Lexmark to get on the
bandwagon |
| jimbo |
It looks like to me that Epson,
Xerox, and Cannon are much further along in looking into
this. |
| kedwards |
(my point was that, for me anyway,
plug'n'play rarely works, and it still doesn't really
help me expose my devices on the network |
| |
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| jimbo |
Exactly |
| jimbo |
Remember the current printer
paridign was design at Apple in the late 80's. We as
printer companies have not evolved it at all. |
| |
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| kedwards |
Just as an aside, I should point
out that if you're a Core Jini reader, or even if you're
not but you're getting started with Jini, you may want to
check out the web page http://www.kedwards.com/jini |
| jimbo |
Jini has the ability to make the
end user experience seemless. |
| kedwards |
this page has some updates and bug
fixes for the book, as well as a few articles on
troubleshooting Jini apps |
| JoeSamHOST |
And free chapters at the JDC |
| kedwards |
Yes! |
| JoeSamHOST |
I believe that Bruno has a
question |
| bruno |
I am also having difficulties
getting my project to use jini, but due to technical
reasons : |
| bruno |
(1) Using Jini in an Internet
environment, (2) Dealing with firewalls, (3) Doing the
above with |
| bruno |
very thin clients (at least Jini
is good for that). |
| kedwards |
Hi Bruno, just to clarify, what
are the issues with using Jini in an internet
environment? Are you concerned about scalability, or
security, or administration...? |
| bruno |
No, strictly making services
available at individual users while |
| |
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| bruno |
keeping the Jini paradigm intact.
Also, dealing with the problems |
| bruno |
caused by firewalls that block
Jini ports and RMI ports. Finally, dealing |
| |
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| bruno |
with the issue of doing this in a
secure way (i.e.: require authentication for accessing |
| bruno |
services, etc.). Just the typical
Internet service issues. |
| |
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| kedwards |
Yeah... we've been playing around
with the idea of an AuthenticationService here. basically
clients that need to authenticate services, or services
that need to authenticate clients, would go through an
authentication service to acquire secure credentials |
| kedwards |
Hopefully some standard interfaces
for this sort of thing will emerge in the near future... |
| bruno |
Yup! That is one of the services
I've determined as necessary. But there certainly |
| bruno |
are many more. |
| kedwards |
I'm not sure there's much hope on
the firewall front. RMI can layer atop HTTP now, but it's
not optimal. And probably few if any firewalls will (or
even should) pass discovery traffic...I imagine many
network adminiistrators will be loathe to expose their
internal lookup services to the world. |
| bruno |
I'm working on doing proof of
concept on several of those. |
| kedwards |
Cool! |
| kedwards |
Bruno, do you mind me asking what
company you work for? If you'd rather not say, that's
fine... I'm just always curious about who is using Jini. |
| bruno |
Ericsson. Wireless Internet
Systems. Geoportal project. |
| kedwards |
Very nifty! Has Ericsson announced
any definite Jini product plans? It seems that lots of
companies have done demoware, but few have announced
solid product plans yet... |
| JoeSamHOST |
Reminder, |
| JoeSamHOST |
if you have a question please type
? and I will put you in the queue. When your question is
up I'll let you know. |
| kedwards |
(Xerox, for example, has
participated in some Jini demos, but hasn't announced any
products...unfortunately...) |
| bruno |
No announced products from our
project. But other projects are working on it. I believe |
| JoeSamHOST |
Keith, I think this leads us to a
question I had, |
| JoeSamHOST |
What weaknesses or omissions have
you found in the current spec? |
| bruno |
there was a prototype called
pamela at JavaOne done by our RTP people. |
| |
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| kedwards |
Well, I've found one bug in the
current spec -- dealing with what the requirements are
for setting sequence numbers on events. But I doubt that
that will affect many people (yet). |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
One bug is pretty good ;-) |
| kedwards |
Some of the weaknesses in the spec
have to do with the client-side APIs. And fortunately,
Jini 1.1 has some solutions for that in the form of
*much* easier to use client APIs |
| kedwards |
Actually, I think the biggest
problem people have with Jini doesn't have anything to do
with the specs... |
| kedwards |
The biggest problems have to do
with (1) properly configuring your environment, and (2)
understanding how downloadable code works in Java. Even
experienced RMI programmers get stumped by these things
regularly. |
| |
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| kedwards |
This is one of the reasons I wrote
the articles on the kedwards.com web site--even with the
book, I was getting a lot of questions about how codebase
works, etc. So the articles on the web site were an
attempt at providing a bit more information in this area. |
| kedwards |
Word is that Java 1.3 (the
"Kestrel" release, due in early access soon)
will fix some of these problems by obviating the need for
building RMI stubs. Instead, stubs will by dynamically
generated by RMI as needed. |
| |
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| kedwards |
Anyone else have any questions?
comments? Complaints...? :-) |
| jimbo |
What can I/we do to help the Jini
community grow? Are there user groups being formed
outside of the Sun Community process? |
| |
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| kedwards |
Jimbo, that's a really good
question... actually, I don't know of any Jini users
groups outside the community. That's a great idea though. |
| |
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| jimbo |
So everything you know of is
coming through jini.org more or less. |
| kedwards |
One thing I'd like to see is more
people sharing code on the www.jini.org web site. I'm
guilty of this myself... but I think this would be a big
help to people getting started with Jini |
| kedwards |
yeah, pretty much. |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
what can you tell us about Jini
related projects at PARC? |
| jimbo |
I know Noel's nuggets really
helped early on. I am now awaiting the book. |
| kedwards |
I do think it would be great if
Javasoft proposed some ideas for what they think are the
most needed services... clearly, they have more
experience with Jini than anyone else at this point |
| kedwards |
For example, an
AuthenticationService has already been mentioned. |
| |
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| kedwards |
There are a number of Jini-related
projects going on at parc... I can probably only talk
about the things I've been working on though. I've got a
couple of related projects, both of which use Jini |
| jimbo |
They are working on Printing and
Storage right now. But there are so many other services
that need to be worked on. |
| kedwards |
The first is a sort of
next-generation document mangement system... this makes
it sounds really boring, which it isn't! It's sort of an
extensible, Java-based storage system that integrates
well with the web, filessytems, etc. |
| kedwards |
and allows hot-pluggable Java code
to run inside the system. |
| jimbo |
Compute Services maybe, or
rendering engines, spell checkers, or Jini
butlers/helpers, date books, room schedulers, etc etc |
| kedwards |
My second project is more user
interface-centered. It's basically software to run big
wall-sized displays--sort of like giant-sized
computer-controlled whiteboards that you can |
| kedwards |
draw on. The thing is Jini-aware,
and stores its information in the storage service I
mentioned earlier. |
| kedwards |
I'm hoping that the document
managment system project could lead to some standard
interfaces for such things... my guess is that it's too
early to standardize on interfaces for smart whiteboards
just yet though. |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
Sounds very interesting. |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
To come back to what Jimbo was
talking about for a moment, |
| kedwards |
One of the other things that I can
probably talk about is a sort of "portable
portals" effort--the idea is to have a small
wireless tablet-like device with an LCD display that can
act as a "remote control" for the Jini services
around you. |
| |
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| jimbo |
That sounds really cool. How are
you thinking of handling UI issues: |
| |
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| kedwards |
Yes, Joe Sam? |
| jimbo |
What I mean is that you have a
remote, but you may want to get at services through your
TV. |
| bruno |
? |
| JoeSamHOST |
Go ahead, Bruno |
| bruno |
With the tablet remote, are you
thinking of a special device, or are you talking about
enabling any |
| kedwards |
Yeah, those sorts of issues really
haven't been our focus with the portable portals thing...
the idea there was that you would use this in the
workplace. Basically you walk around parc and your tablet
is aware of the other tablets around it, the printers,
scanners, and ohter devices.. and would let you use any
of them |
| bruno |
device with a wireless connection
to the home network? |
| kedwards |
Definitely wireless, but
definitely not home (at least for the first pass). We're
focusing on the workplace |
| kedwards |
(And, I should say, this isn't a
product effort at all.. just a small research project) |
| bruno |
Would PDA's be used as tablets as
well? |
| kedwards |
We're currently using Fujitsu
Point 510 tablets with a Proxim Rangelan wireless network
(1.5mbps). The software's just pure java, though, so
should work on anything with a JVM |
| kedwards |
In fact, the software that runs
the giant whiteboards is also pure Java (pretty much
*everything* we do these days is pure Java), so you could
run it on a tablet or a PDA or what ever. |
| bruno |
But wouldn't there be issues about
the GUI? We are facing similar issues... |
| theBaron |
Type HEREswing? |
| bruno |
(I mean different devices have
different capabilities) |
| kedwards |
yeah, doing GUIs for Jini services
is a *big* drag... this is definitely a difficulty for
us. We're taking an approach very much like the
Administrable interface, where you ask the service's
proxy to provide its UI. |
| kedwards |
Oh, I think I misunderstood the
question. Yes, different types of devices have different
UI characteristics. One of the things that will have to
happen is a set of standard ways to ask for different
types of UIs (fullblown Swing GUI, auditory, scalled-down
PDA GUI, etc.) |
| |
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| kedwards |
It would be great if this happened
sooner rather than later--perhaps this is an area where
Javasoft should provide some leadership. |
| bruno |
Exactly. I think there is a
project at jini.org trying to come up with a standard. |
| kedwards |
That's right; I recall that now. I
haven't heard anything about their progress lately...I
should check in and see what's up. |
| |
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| kedwards |
The pluggable look-and-feel in
Swing is the type of thing that sounds like it could
provide a solution to some of these problems (plug in an
auditory L'n'F, for example), but of course it requires
you to have all of swing on your device. |
| kedwards |
Any other questions? |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
Keith, Just wanted to mention,
there ARE a lot of Jini services needed, |
| JoeSamHOST |
but isn't that for us developers
to do rather than Sun? |
| JoeSamHOST |
Isn't Jini basically a framework
to allow us to deliver those services? |
| |
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| kedwards |
yes, definitely. But some key
services are closer to being *infrastructure* than
anything that an end-user would see directly. For
example, Sun decided to provide a TransactionManager
service. And in Jini 1.1 they'll be providing an
EventMailbox service, a LookupDiscovery service, and a
LeaseRenewal service, so |
| JoeSamHOST |
We are getting close to the end of
our time, if you have any more questions, please ask now. |
| bruno |
? |
| kedwards |
there are some areas where Sun (I
think) should provide leadership. My opinion is that the
user interface issues around Jini are important enough
that if they're not getting solved quickly by the
community, then Sun may want to provide some
leadership... just my opinion though... |
| JoeSamHOST |
Go ahead bruno |
| bruno |
Can you elaborate on what the
LookupDiscovery service is? |
| kedwards |
This is a service that basically
discovers lookup services on behalf of another service.
This may seem pretty useless--after all, a service would
have to perform lookup anyway in order to find the lookup
discoveyr service! But it turns out to be useful, |
| kedwards |
for example, you may have a
service that uses RMID to deactivate itself. Such a
service won't be reactivated by simple multicast
announcement mesages from looup services--because it
takes an RMI call to reactivate an inactive object. So a
service like this could find the LookupDiscoveyr service,
delegate its discovery to it, and then make itself
inactive. The LookupDiscoveyr service will cause it to be
reactived whenever lookup services are found. |
| |
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| bruno |
Thanks |
| kedwards |
I think I'll be coming up with a
set of new services for a future edition of the
book--Core Jini has an EventMailbox service and a
LeasingService, both of which Javasoft thought were |
| kedwards |
important enough to put into Jini
1.1. It's a mixed bag I guess... :-) |
| paulak |
Type HERE? |
| JoeSamHOST |
Yes, go ahead, paulak |
| |
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| paulak |
What's the one thing you think Sun
could do better (anyone, anyone?) :-) |
| |
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| kedwards |
Is this a trick question?? :-) I
think educating developers about RMI is one thing they
could definitely do better with. It's definitely a
stumbling block for Jini programmers. |
| |
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| Hugh |
? |
| MrKellyHOST |
GO a head Hugh |
| Hugh |
How far off for jini (or similar)
apps to reach market? |
| |
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| kedwards |
That's a tough question... I think
that Jini software services will probalby make it to
market quickly. Things like format conversion services,
storage services, etc. I think hardware will take more
time though--h/w vendors have a tougher job, longer lead
times, etc. |
| JoeSamHOST |
I'm sorry everyone |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
my first session died. |
| kedwards |
I would expect the first
commercial software services to show up sometime this
year. |
| jeff |
? |
| MrKellyHOST |
go ahead jeff |
| jeff |
It looks like I missed you talking
about when we can see Jini implemented in something I can
buy or use. |
| jeff |
What kind of services do you
expect? |
| kedwards |
Didn't miss much! I was just
saying that I'd expect software services to show up this
year, and hardware to take a big longer... in the s/w
department, I'd expect to see storage services and format
conversion services pretty quickly, I think. Along, of
course, with more basic Jini "infrastructure"
services |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
We're near the end of the time for
our session, |
| jeff |
What are these basic services as
you see them? |
| MrKellyHOST |
does any have any more questions
for Keith |
| kedwards |
mostly things like services to
help with remote event processing, security and
authentication, etc. |
| JoeSamHOST |
and we are ready for the book
giveaway. |
| |
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| JoeSamHOST |
Unfortunately, my session died
earlier, |
| JoeSamHOST |
so I can't quote the exacy
question, |
| JoeSamHOST |
but we have chosen Bruno to win
the book |
| kedwards |
Congrats, Bruno! |
| Hugh |
Bruno deserves it. |
| JoeSamHOST |
for his series of questions
regarding the UI. |
| bruno |
Thanks! |
| paulak |
Way to go, B! |
| JoeSamHOST |
If you hang around for a few
minutes, Bruno |
| bruno |
Will do. |
| jeff |
Good Job!!! |
| JoeSamHOST |
we'll give you information . |
| jeff |
thanks kedwards |
| JoeSamHOST |
I'm going to declare the session
officially over, |
| JoeSamHOST |
but of course, |
| JoeSamHOST |
anyone can stay and chat. |
| MrKellyHOST |
Thank you Keith for a chat well
done |
| kedwards |
Thanks, it's been a blast!
Remember, if you're a Core Jini reader, visit http://www.kedwards.com/jini for bug fixes and
updates |
| JoeSamHOST |
and come to John's session next
week. |
| kedwards |
And thank you all for attending. |
| JoeSamHOST |
Keith, thank sso much for an
informative session. |
| MrKellyHOST |
Yes thank you all for coming |
| kedwards |
Bye bye... |
