Using JNDI and RMI

The Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) provides a standard way of accessing naming and directory services. The API describes how objects can be bound in a distributed directory service, and how clients of the directory can locate and retrieve these objects. It plays a critical role in any J2EE environment, providing the central naming and directory service API used by containers, J2EE resources, deployed applications, and external clients.

JNDI has an open architecture that permits the integration of a number of different implementations of directory services. These service provider implementations map vendor-neutral JNDI calls to the operations supported by the underlying directory service. For instance, your Java SDK distribution comes equipped with service providers for LDAP, CORBA Naming Services, and Java's Remote Method Invocation (RMI) Registry. Other service providers are also available for Sun's Network Information Service (NIS), Novell's Network Directory Service (NDS), DNS, and Windows Registry. Everything from Java objects to email addresses can be stored in the various types of directories, making them useful for a variety of things. In fact, WebLogic uses an embedded LDAP repository to store security information about WebLogic users, groups, security policies, and much more. The JNDI provides a standard interface to all of these types of directory services, and in WebLogic you will find a robust, distributed JNDI implementation that provides the naming and directory support for all J2EE applications.

WebLogic's JNDI implementation is used primarily as the standard J2EE mechanism that allows clients to publish, locate, and retrieve objects in a distributed fashion. For instance, when a JDBC data source or EJB is deployed, it is made available in a global JNDI tree, bound to its configured JNDI name. A Java client then can use the JNDI name to look up and gain access to the resource. Other J2EE resources such as JMS connection factories, JTA transactions, and RMI objects also may be bound in the JNDI tree.

In this chapter, we will look at how WebLogic's JNDI implementation can be accessed and used, as well as how you can bind your own objects into the JNDI tree. You also will learn how WebLogic's JNDI implementation can take advantage of clusters, providing transparent global replication of bound services or objects across the members of the cluster. This cluster-wide JNDI tree may appear as a single, global hierarchy, but it actually is replicated across each member of the cluster. The JNDI implementation supports both replicated objects (or services), where the objects are replicated across all members of the cluster, and pinned objects, where the object (or service) is bound to a single server but still is accessible to the cluster.

The RMI framework is the standard technology underlying distributed object programming in Java. It enables a Java client to transparently access remote RMI objects by creating stubs that proxy requests through to the remote object and marshal the return values. WebLogic provides a high-performance implementation of RMI that complements the JNDI and clustering frameworks; in this chapter, you will learn how to create your own RMI objects that can take advantage of these features. For instance, you can easily create cluster-aware stubs that proxy requests through to a server hosting the runtime object. These cluster-aware stubs maintain a list of all servers in the cluster that host the object, allowing the stub to transparently provide load-balancing and failover facilities to the client. Moreover, the RMI registry that allows clients to locate the RMI objects with which they want to interact can be accessed using WebLogic's JNDI implementation. In fact, this technology is used in the implementation of many other J2EE resources within WebLogic, such as EJB home objects that provide failover and load-balancing facilities.

The final topic covered in this chapter is the use of CORBA and its IIOP transport protocol as an alternative to RMI. WebLogic can generate Interface Definition Language (IDL) descriptions of RMI objects, which then can be used to create clients on any language platform. These clients can interact with WebLogic using the standard CORBA/IIOP framework, providing a basis for rich interoperability.