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Book:   Jini in a Nutshell
Subject:   Jini in a Nutshell Review
Date:   2000-07-27 16:51:00
From:   Anonymous Reader
Rating:  StarStarStarStarStar

Written in the Nutshell style of one-half tutorial, one-half reference, this is arguably a better buy than "Core Jini" if only because the latter is an 800-page gorilla that you'll never finish. "Nutshell" is a little more practical -- its early chapter on configuring the Jini neccessities (rmid, reggie, mahalo, etc.) is stronger, especially if you prefer to work with command-lines than trivial GUI's, as I would imagine most server-side types would.


An early chapter on RMI seems like a throwaway, except it has some handy informationsomehow missed from the corresponding "Java Enterprise in a Nutshell", notably the trick about forcing your own serialVersionUID when you make a trivial change to a class and don't want to break existing installations.


I'm also impressed with the imagination in its introduction, showing how Jini could be set up to provide printing services to clients that know nothing of the devices on the network, don't havedrivers, etc. While JavaSoft foolishly hypes internet toasters, this kind of hypothetical case study gets developers interested!


The second half of the book is the typical Nutshell compendium of classes and methods. Arguably, you already have this in the dev kit, but sometimes it's more convenient to just double check a book than to pop out your browser.


Important note: Jini is a fairly advanced topic. I think there's a basic assumption in this book that the reader is a strong Java programmer and has had at least some exposure to RMI, Beans (particularly the event model) and is willing to do something with a catch{} block other thanSystem.exit(0). Arguably, that's an assumption not only of the authors, but of Jini itself.


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