Transparent Dissemination of Adapters in Jini

Jini is a Java-based technology for ’spontaneous’ distributed computing which enables programs to dynamically discover nearby services by means of a type-based lookup mechanism. However, this mechanism requires that all the parties involved first agree on a set of common wellknown interfaces for describing services which offer the same high-level functionalities. We believe that this mechanism will in some situations prove to be too rigid or complex and that “interface fragmentation” will inevitably happen. We propose a mechanism for automatically disseminating adapters, small downloadable components that convert between types that describe similar services but are yet incompatible. The implementation of the solution consists in the definition of a new Jini service, the Adapter Service, which is a repository for adapters that registers adapteraugmented proxy objects with the Jini Lookup Service when new services appear on the network. This solution does not require any modification to clients, services or to the