Early Adopter JXTA: Peer-to-Peer Computing with Java [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Sing Li (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2001

JXTA is a new technology that enables us to build peer-to-peer systems - systems which enable computers to discover one another and co-operate together across the Internet. This kind of interaction characterizes some of the most interesting networked applications that have appeared in the last year: Napster, Gnutella, Morpheus, and their relatives. In these systems, a user installs a client program, which discovers other installed clients on other machines, and communicates with them - allowing the sharing of files between computers. This peer-to-peer architecture is a completely new paradigm in software design, representing a totally different approach to the standard client-server frameworks used in almost all the distributed systems that currently exist.

JXTA aims to provide a set of technologies that allow programmers to develop clients and services that can interact in this way, without having to implement all of the elements that make up such a system themselves. Aspects such as discovery of peers, advertising presence, penetrating firewalls, and transferring data, which are common to all peer-to-peer applications, are handled by a set of standard libraries that are available to a JXTA application.

What does this book cover?

- The nature of peer-to-peer applications

- The architecture of JXTA

- Using the JXTA Shell

- Developing JXTA applications

- Designing JXTA services

- The future of JXTA

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Early Adopter JXTA teaches the experienced developer all they need to know to be able to play confidently with JXTA. It will show how to use JXTA as the foundation for developing a peer-to-peer application, and in the process explain how to think and design in a peer-to-peer way, and hopefully inspire you to come up with the ideas for the next generation of peer-to-peer applications. The code in this book makes use of the JXTA reference implementation, and is written in Java, although the principles discussed will be just as relevant to other implementations in other languages. The book also makes use of the EZEL coding framework for JXTA development, which is included in the free code download for the book from the publisher's web site.

About the Author

Sing Li is an active author, consultant, and entrepreneur. He has written for popular technical journals and is the creator of the "Internet Global Phone", one of the very first Internet phones available. His wide-ranging consulting expertise spans Internet and Intranet systems design, distributed architectures, digital convergence, embedded systems, real-time technologies, and cross platform software design. He also participates in the Jini and Jxta communities.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information Inc.; 1st edition (December 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861006357
• ISBN-13: 978-1861006356
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,330,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, apart from the EZEL lock-in, May 6, 2002

By 

Wilfred Springer (Tricht, Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Early Adopter JXTA: Peer-to-Peer Computing with Java (Paperback)

If you are new to JXTA and P2P computing, this is the book you need. If you want to know all about the JXTA API, you might want to look around a little more.

I loved chapter three, providing an overview of what is going on behind the scenes. This is an excelent example of how this book fills the gap. The only thing I found a little disturbing is the flood of different views on the JXTA architecture.

The one thing I *really* hate about the book is the EZEL lock-in. EZEL (Eazy Entry Library) tries to hide the JXTA complexity by wrapping it in a simplified API. First of all, it appeared be quite hard to track the EZEL code. (It appeared to be part of the general code download at WROX.) Apart from that, it completely hides the JXTA API, so in a way, the title of this book could have been changed to 'Early Adopter: EZEL'.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars You gotta be kidding...., February 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Early Adopter JXTA: Peer-to-Peer Computing with Java (Paperback)

This book is a REAL disappointment from Sing Li and Wrox. I have
other books by Li (Jini) and it is excellent... First off, about half the book requires a library called EZEL. The thing doesn't exist. It's not at jxta.org, there's nothing at the Wrox website. So, on page 154, under "Creating Our Very First JXTA Service", you get stopped dead in your tracks because of this non-existent library. If I see Sing Li or the Wrox folks at Java One this year...

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good take off, EZEL crash, August 22, 2002

By 

"zakazmi" (Glasgow, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Early Adopter JXTA: Peer-to-Peer Computing with Java (Paperback)

My first book on JXTA. No quite what i was hoping for, the first couple of chapters are excellent.
Working examples accompanied by diagrams and pictures, really helpful.
BUT....
As soon as Mr Li gets to the EZEL library (which i failed to find) the book gets hugely complicated. Why? Because you can't find the EZEL library (at least not in the edition i had), and part of the book is dedicated to teaching programming JXTA with that library. What if i wanted not to program with EZEL? what if i want to write my own library?
At this point i didn't feel comfortable and had to skip those chapters to the working examples at the end, which again were good.
If you are starting JXTA then it might be worth reading the first few chapter, but beware of some spelling mistakes and assumptions made regarding your knowledge of Java.