Alright, I'll go for the "cheap" reason of posting for a selfish, free book award. Instead of doing my own research, I'll "pool" from my fellow Java Ranch co-horts. What is JXTA? I'm almost positive the first letter stands for "Java". --Rick
JXTA is supposed to be short for "JuXTApose," at least according to one Sun web page. The idea behind it: peer-to-peer computing. In this context, you can think of any JXTA-participating machine as a "peer" (i.e., sometimes requesting data, sometimes serving it).
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Could you give us a simplified scenario about how JXTA would be used? I need to visualize this.
Originally posted by Michael Ernest: JXTA is supposed to be short for "JuXTApose," at least according to one Sun web page. The idea behind it: peer-to-peer computing. In this context, you can think of any JXTA-participating machine as a "peer" (i.e., sometimes requesting data, sometimes serving it).
I was wondering why all the fuzz about P2P. The original PC networking scheme was P2P on a LAN (a machine could act as a client or as a server, depending on what it needed done). I recall having seen P2P demos way back on Macintosh networks using Appletalk much before Windows appeared. Server and client components sitting on each machine enabled data flow amongst the peered community. These combined with some flavor of RPC, enabled quite complex interaction. From reading the JXTA pages, it seems to me it adds four ingredients: 1. WAN (Internet) connectivity 2. Uniform service publishing and discovery 3. Hardware substrate independence and small footprint (can run on small and large devices) 4. Community structuring and management tools Such a P2P scheme might be built on top of service directories, a lookup and registry mechanism, and a suitable transport say RMI to CORBA. Am I on the right track re interpreting what JXTA is? Is it just a very efficient way of accomplishing such a scheme, plus some added structuring tools to build and manage peered communities? Does it use RMI? Thanks for your comments.
Joined: Jan 30, 2002
Does JXTA need to be Client server to run P2P.....if so, how is it different than just running any other client server app. If not, how was this accomplished??? Tim
The notion of 'client-server' has become dramatically softer and fuzzier with the development of the internet. As a term, it's now used far more to describe 'request-response' mechanics, or one side sharing resources with the other, than what it used to mean. In 'real' client-server environments, the client's just a little guy who acts, in the smallest of circumstances, as an input-and-display system. The server is the big fat guy with all the data, and responsbility for managing multiple client connections, running business rules, keeping data straight, etc. Databases and their users are closest to the client-server model in old-school terms than, say, a web server and a browser, which the snootiest of us call 'mere request-response.' Nonetheless, the mechanics of both are similar enough structurally that the term has blurred. In peer-to-peer, as in the Jini model of distributed computing, there is no one dedicated 'server' dealing with some number of clients. Imagine instead that when you connect to the network you discover what services are available, and make use of the ones that matter to you. You expect servers to be up and running all the time. In a peer network, you take what you get at the moment you're in a getting mood. It's a fundamentally different model NOT for what the client perceives, but rather for the way it is developed. P2P is an architectural, not an end-user shift in using networks. If we blur the idea of P2P in a similar manner, it's easy to see we've been doing P2P all along. What's different id stuff like JXTA, that is, programming frameworks specifically designed to promote the concept of so-called unreliable services forming a community and working together in-time.
Joined: Oct 09, 2001
Michael, can you give me some simple case scenario of why or how you would use JXTA? Marc