Interoperability of Jini and other Grid systems

The new generation Grid technologies point increasingly toward the service-oriented programming paradigm. The emerging Web services technology, which is becoming a de facto industrial standard, makes possible the integration of Web based services running on geographically distributed, heterogeneous systems. This is the base architecture of the evolving Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) standard as well that aims to align Web Services with the traditional Grid technologies. An other alternative is the use of Jini, a novel and promising piece of Java technology, designed to create dynamic distributed object systems. Although Jini-based distributed systems have numerous advantages, they are often criticised because of the assumption of a homogeneous (Java) programming environment that is simply not achievable in large scale Grid systems. In this paper, we explore the possibilities incorporated in Jini, like protocol independence and integration of non-Java services and clients, that make the collaboration with already existing Grid systems possible. We also outline Jini programming methods and patterns, which can be used to achieve the above mentioned interoperability.