Design and implementation of a Jini-J2EE bridge to enable access to enterprise services

Abstract

Jini provides a plug-and-play network architecture suitable for network configurations used in dynamic computing environments. The advent of the Java 2 platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) enables a component-based approach to designing, developing, assembling and deploying multi-tier enterprise applications and services. We demonstrate by design and implementation how Jini and J2EE technologies can be used together to provide flexible, dynamic access to enterprise services in mobile computing environments such as those involving mobile handheld devices. We have designed and implemented a Jini-J2EE bridge architecture, which enables wireless handheld devices spontaneous access to J2EE services by exploiting the plug-and-play features of Jini. We present an empirical performance evaluation of the Jini-J2EE bridge implementation. Our results show that the Jini-J2EE bridge introduces negligible overheads on the end-to-end performance of user applications and demonstrate that the bridge enables a viable, cost-effective approach in providing flexible access to enterprise services by handheld devices used in mobile computing environments.