A Scalable Architecture for Low Latency Pricing
The sole reason I’m still keeping an eye on Java is called Jini. It’s an exceptional piece of work, which for a change leverages Java features instead of battling them. Clean and concise interfaces, very well thought-out functionality with an experienced team that managed to resist feature creep, showing that even in Java it is possible to create works of beauty.
The Jini community website posted a whitepaper on how one group used the Jini and Javaspaces standards to implement a classical master/worker application, in this case one that does bond pricing. Interesting read (certainly if you are a sort of interested bystander w.r.t. the financial sector), and a nice example of how Jini makes this sort of work a lot simpler.
This sort of stuff certainly helps in kicking Jini-like functionality for Smalltalk a notch higher on my todo list…
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January 20th, 2006 at 5:19 am
I’ve heard people complain about the complexity of Jini and it’s difficult to set up and use , and quite a lot of people go with a light weight solution called GreenTea: http://www.greenteatech.com . We are a startup-like software team and would prefer a light weight solution so that we can develop a distributed application right away. Have you tried it out? It would be interesting to see your thoughts on that.
Gary
January 20th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Jini heavyweight? Gosh, that’s the first time I’ve heard it being described this way
It is true that the out-of-the-box experience of Jini at least used to be less than ideal. But that, of course, is not a very valid reason to stay away from such a product.
What I do know, is that Jini probably approaches the absolutely minimal set of functionality you need to build a reliable distributed system. It all depends, of course, if you subscribe to the ideas the Jini people had on distributed computing, like very much taking into account Deutsch’ Fallacies of Distributed Computing and their ideas on transparency.
I will look at GreenTea - thanks for the pointer, I am always interested in this sort of stuff even though I don’t do Java these days - but I fear that anything they have made it simpler means that they go below this minimum set of functionality for reliable distributed computing.
Building a distributed system is trivial. Building a distributed system that works in the real world is hard. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve been so deeply involved with Jini, but I think that this is one of the very few products out there that is “rightsized”.
January 28th, 2006 at 3:49 am
Oh my the GreenTea trolls again. cdegroot, these guys used to spam the old jini and javaspaces mailing lists all the time. Just ignore them..
February 17th, 2006 at 1:25 am
We at GigaSpaces have done a lot to give you the benefits of Jini/JavaSpaces/Rio with what we hope is a much more friendly and easy to use implementation, especially in our just released version 5.0.
You’re welcome to download it and play around with it. By the way, we are co-publishers of the white paper cdegroot is referring to.
Geva
www.gigaspaces.com