Features of Jini of Relevance
Use of Lookup Service is typical yellow pages service in all distributed systems (cf. DNS etc.)
Use of Java as IDL(Interface Definition Language) and RMI as transport layer is specific to Jini
- Clearly can be replaced by other object models and in particular XML can be used to specify services
Has a particular query syntax with attribute array and use of simple yes/no matching
- Could and perhaps should be generalized
- Concept of “services with precise definitions” and “queries accessing classes of services” seems general
Has a “leasing concept” which seems very valuable in distributed computing where resources are dynamic and fault tolerance important