Chapter 10: Jini Extensible Remote Invocation

Jeri is an alternative to the JRMP protocol used by "traditional" RMI. It incorporates lesons learnt from RMI over IIOP and other transports.

Jini is middleware for distributed processing. As such, it relies on a number of mechanisms for distributed processing. One of these is remote method invocation (RMI). In RMI, an object stays on a server and a dumb proxy is sent to a client. The client makes method calls on this proxy. The proxy just transmits calls across the network to the server, which calls the original object. The result of this method call is then sent back to the proxy which returns the result to the client. This is an object-oriented version of remote procedure calls. It is somewhat similar to CORBA remote references, except that the proxy is a Java object which runs in the client and does not require the "backplane" support of CORBA.

The original implementation of RMI used JRMP (Java Remote Method Procotol). This is a particular protocol built directly on TCP. Since then a number of other ways of doing RMI have emerged, such as RMI over HTTP (the Web transport protocol), RMI over IIOP (the CORBA transport protocol) and RMI over SSL (secure socket layer). There is even an implementation of RMI on Firewire (IEEE 1394), the high-speed transport layer designed for audio-visual data such as high-definition TV.

The different ways of doing RMI each have their own programmatic interface, with specialised classes. This should be abstracted: one mechanism, with configurations used to select the actual protocol implementation used. For example, a configuration file could specify whether to use RMI over TCP or RMI over IIOP. Then the application could be written in an implementation independant way, with protocol chosen at runtime based on runtime configuration information. This is what Jini has now done, and has developed a new protocol Jini ERI which solves some other issues.

Most books on Java include a section on RMI, and there are complete books just about this topic. A class typically subclasses UnicastRemoteObject. After compilation, the RMI compiler rmic is run on the class file to produce a proxy object. When the service is run, this proxy object must be made network visible in some way so that external clients can locate it. This visibility may be to an RMI Naming service, to a Jini registry or to other directory services. Then a client can use the directory to find the proxy object and use this to make remote calls on the original service object.

There is a little bit of chicanery before an object is made network visible: a class registers itself with the Java runtime by an operation called exporting, and then methods that should use the proxy object instead use the original service object. The Java runtime looks out for these and substitutes the proxy object in its place. This means that the programmer does not deal explicitly with the proxy at all,and seemingly writes code that does not use proxies. The Java runtime takes care of substituting the proxy when necessary. However, this may be a little confusing, and certainly does not make it clear exactly what is going on: this kind of trick is not one that will be in most programmer's experience.

The most common way to use RMI is simply to declare an object that extends UnicastRemoteObject and implements the Remote interface

package jeri;

import java.rmi.*;
import java.rmi.server.*;

public class RmiImplicitExportDemo extends UnicastRemoteObject implements Remote { 

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { 
	// this exports the RMI stub to the Java runtime
	// a thread is started to keep the stub alive
	new RmiImplicitExportDemo(); 

	System.out.println("Proxy is now exported");

	// this application will then stay alive till killed by the user
    } 

    // An empty constructor is needed for the runtime to construct
    // the proxy stub
    public RmiImplicitExportDemo() throws java.rmi.RemoteException {
    }
}

The code in RmiImplicitExportDemo does not mention a proxy object. The runtime will create the proxy when it constructs the RmiImplicitExportDemo object. But just like most other Java objects it needs to have a class definition for the proxy. The proxy class is created using the rmic compiler. This needs to be run on the implementation class file. For example,

javac jeri/RmiImplicitExportDemo.java
rmic -v1.2  jeri.RmiImplicitExportDemo

An alternative approach makes some of the actions dealing with proxies more explicit

package jeri;

import java.rmi.*;
import java.rmi.server.*;

public class RmiExplicitExportDemo implements Remote { 

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { 
	Remote demo = new RmiExplicitExportDemo(); 

	// this exports the RMI stub to the Java runtime
	RemoteStub stub = UnicastRemoteObject.exportObject(demo);

	System.out.println("Proxy is " + stub.toString());
	
	// This application will stay alive until killed by the user,
	// or it does a System.exit()
	// or it unexports the proxy

	// Note that the demo is "apparently" unexported, not the proxy 
	UnicastRemoteObject.unexportObject(demo, true);
    } 
}

javac jeri/RmiExplicitExportDemo.java
rmic -v1.2  jeri.RmiExplicitExportDemo

Jini 2.0 makes exporting and un-exporting into explicit operations, using static methods of an Exporter class. So, for example, to export an object using JRMP, an exporter of type JRMPExporter is created and used

package jeri;

import java.rmi.*; 
import net.jini.export.*; 
import net.jini.jrmp.JrmpExporter;

public class ExportJrmpDemo implements Remote { 

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { 

	Exporter exporter = new JrmpExporter();

	// export an object of this class
	Remote proxy = exporter.export(new ExportJrmpDemo()); 
	System.out.println("Proxy is " + proxy.toString()); 

	// now unexport it once finished
	exporter.unexport(true); 
    } 
}

The proxy classes have to be generated using rmic again.

To export an object using IIOP, an exporter of type IIOPExporter is used

package jeri;

import java.rmi.*; 
import net.jini.export.*; 
import net.jini.iiop.IiopExporter;

public class ExportIiopDemo implements Remote { 

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { 

	Exporter exporter = new IiopExporter();

	// export an object of this class
	Remote proxy = exporter.export(new ExportIiopDemo()); 
	System.out.println("Proxy is " + proxy.toString()); 

	// now unexport it once finished
	exporter.unexport(true); 
    } 
}

Jeri stands for "Jini Extensible Remote Invocation". It supports the standard RMI semantics but is designed to be more flexible than existing RMI implementations such as JRMP and RMI-over-IIOP. It can support

1. The new Jini trust model

2. Elimination of the compile-time generation of stubs

3. Non-TCP transports

4. More flexible distributed garbage collection

5. Much greater customisation

The standard exporter for Jeri is BasicJeriExporter. It's constructor takes parameters that specify the transport protocol (e.g. TCP on an arbitrary port) and an invocation object that handles the details of remote method invocation, such as marshalling and unmarshalling parameters and return values, and specifying methods and exceptions. Other Jeri exporters can wrap around this class. The most common use is to create a TCP-based exporter:

package jeri;

import java.rmi.*; 
import net.jini.export.*; 
import net.jini.jeri.BasicJeriExporter;
import net.jini.jeri.BasicILFactory;
import net.jini.jeri.tcp.TcpServerEndpoint;

public class ExportJeriDemo implements Remote { 

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { 

	Exporter exporter = new BasicJeriExporter(TcpServerEndpoint.getInstance(0),
						  new BasicILFactory());

	// export an object of this class
	Remote proxy = exporter.export(new ExportJeriDemo()); 
	System.out.println("Proxy is " + proxy.toString()); 

	// now unexport it once finished
	exporter.unexport(true); 
    } 
}

Note that there is no need to generate the proxy class as part of the compile-time build. The proxy is generated at runtime by the Jeri system.

The exported object, the proxy, is declared to be of the Remote interface. In fact, the specification says that the proxy will implement all of the remote interfaces of the original Remote object. In the above examples there are none, but in general a remote object will implement one or more Remote interfaces, and so will the proxy.

This last point is worth expanding on. Suppose we have an interface Iface which does not extend Remote. The interface RemoteIface extends both Iface and Remote. From there we could have implementations RemoteIfaceImpl and IfaceImpl, and we could generate proxies from each of these using Exporter. The class names of the proxies are automatically generated (and are obscure) so we shall call these classes RemoteIfaceImplProxy and IfaceImplProxy respectively. The resulting class diagram is (with the non-standard dotted arrow showing the generation of the proxies)

The most notable consequence of this is that the IfaceImplProxy cannot be cast to an Iface whereas IfaceRemoteImplProxy can be:

Iface iface = (Iface) ifaceImplProxy        // class cast error
Iface iface = (Iface) ifaceRemoteImplProxy  // okay

Failure to include the Remote interface will mean that you can't lookup the object. You won't be able to lookup an Iface object if it is an Iface - it needs to be an RemoteIface object.

The choices of transport protocol (TCP, Firewire, etc) and invocation protocol (JRMP, IIOP, Jeri) are usually hard-coded into an application. That is, they are made as compile-time choices. More flexibility is gained if they are left until runtime choices. Jini 2.0 now supports a configuration mechanism that allows a single compile-time object to be customised at runtime. The general mechanism is explored in more detail in a later chapter. It is recommended to be used for exporting objects.

The configuration mechanism uses a number of levels of indirection to gain a single compile-time object customised in different ways at runtime. Firstly, it gains its Exporter from a Configuration object, which can contain a variety of runtime configuration information. The Configuration object is obtained from a ConfigurationProvider. The ConfigurationProvider can be set to return a custom Configuration, but defaults to a ConfigurationFile which takes a configuration file as parameter.

The ConfigurationFile object has a constructor ConfigurationFile(String[] args). The first element of this list is a filename for a configuration file. The list is passed to the ConfigurationFile constructor from the ConfigurationProvider.getInstance(args) method. Once a configuration object is found, configurable objects can be extracted from it by the Configuration.getEntry(String component, String name, Class type) method. The parameters to this are

1. component - the component being configured

2. name - the name of the entry for the component

3. type - the type of the object to be returned

To make this more concrete, the contents of the configuration file for a ConfigurationFile may be

import net.jini.jrmp.*; 
JeriExportDemo {
    exporter = new JrmpExporter(); 
}

The configuration used can be changed by modifying the contents of the file or by using different files. To specify the IIOP protocol, change the configuration file to jeri/iiop.config:

import net.jini.iiop.*; 
JeriExportDemo {
    exporter = new IiopExporter(); 
}

import net.jini.jrmp.*; 
import net.jini.iiop.*; 

JrmpExportDemo {
    exporter = new JrmpExporter(); 
}

IiopExportDemo {
     exporter = new IiopExporter(); 
}

To use the new Jeri protocol, use the configuration file jeri/jeri.config

import net.jini.jeri.BasicILFactory;
import net.jini.jeri.BasicJeriExporter;
import net.jini.jeri.tcp.TcpServerEndpoint;

JeriExportDemo {
    exporter = new BasicJeriExporter(TcpServerEndpoint.getInstance(0),
                                     new BasicILFactory()); 
}

Once an Exporter has been found, an object can be exported to the Java runtime by the Exporter.export() method. This takes the implementation object and returns a proxy that can be registered with a lookup service or any other remote directory.

The program to export an object using this configuration mechanism is

package jeri;

import java.rmi.*; 
import net.jini.config.*; 
import net.jini.export.*; 

public class ConfigExportDemo implements Remote { 

    // We are using an explicit config file here so you can see 
    // where the Configuration is coming from. Really, another
    // level of indirection (such as a command-line argument)
    // should be used
    private static String CONFIG_FILE = "jeri/jeri.config";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { 
	String[] configArgs = new String[] {CONFIG_FILE};

	// get the configuration (by default a FileConfiguration) 
	Configuration config = ConfigurationProvider.getInstance(configArgs); 
	System.out.println("Configuration: " + config.toString());
	// and use this to construct an exporter
	Exporter exporter = (Exporter) config.getEntry( "JeriExportDemo", 
							"exporter", 
							Exporter.class); 

	// export an object of this class
	Remote proxy = exporter.export(new ConfigExportDemo()); 
	System.out.println("Proxy is " + proxy.toString()); 

	// now unexport it once finished
	exporter.unexport(true); 
    } 
}

Jini is a distributed system. Any JVM will have references to local objects and to remote objects. In addition, remote JVM's will have references to objects running in any particular JVM. In earlier versions of Jini that used "traditional" RMI, remote references to local objects were enough to keep the local objects from being garbage collected - a thread created by RMI did this. This often lead to "sloppy" code where objects would be created and then apparently all (local) references to those objects went out of scope. Nevertheless, RMI would often keep these objects alive and they would not be garbage collected.

In Jini 2.0 this has become customisable. The default is that objects with explicit references will be strong references, otherwise they will have weak references. Objects with weak references may be garbage collected. Earlier versions of this book (upto Jini 1.2) did not have strong references, and so running examples unchanged may result in this error when the client tries to invoke the service:

java.rmi.NoSuchObjectException: no such object in table

To make this a little more concrete: the FileClassifierServer of chapter 8 used to have code that looked like

public class FileClassifierServer {
    public static void main(String argv[]) {
        new FileClassifierServer();
        ...
    }

    public FileClassifierServer() {
        // Create the service
        new FileClassifierImpl();
        ...
    }
}

public class FileClassifierServer {
    
    protected FileClassifierImpl impl;

    public static void main(String argv[]) {
        FileClassifierServer s = new FileClassifierServer();
        ... // sleep forever
        }
    }

    public FileClassifierServer() {
        // Create the service
        impl = new FileClassifierImpl
        ...
    }
}

interface ProxyAccessor {
    Object getProxy();
}
      

If you found this chapter of value, the full book is available from APress or Amazon . There is a review of the book at Java Zone . The current edition of the book does not yet deal with Jini 2.0, but the next edition will.

This file is Copyright (©) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004 by Jan Newmarch (http://jan.netcomp.edu.au) jan@newmarch.name.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License, the replacement for the earlier Open Content License.