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Technology Stocks : Insignia Solutions (INSG) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Broderick who wrote (506)	1/22/1999 3:30:00 PM
From: Zed	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1606

Does JINI require JENE? Hi IntrepidIrishman. No offense taken or intended. On one hand I was hoping that Sun's JINI does require JENE, on the other I couldn't see why this would be so. I just came off the phone with Mr Reid Cox who was very knowledgeable and helpful. I specifically asked whether JINI requires JENE. His explanation was that yes, JINI runs on top of JENE, BUT that there is no specific requirement for JENE. JINI does require a Java virtual machine, and any compatible embedded Java virtual machine may do. This news is not all bad, as he also provided some useful insight. He said his understanding was that Insignia with JENE provides the only fully functional 100% pure Java virtual machine for embedding. All others are some form of "cut down" Java. He was unsure whether Sun's forthcoming PR event includes or even mentions JENE. What follows in my own interpretation. If you think about it, a cut down version of Java is a bad idea. It destroys the notion of Java as a universal programming language. No longer can you be sure that you "write once, run anywhere". Programmers need to be aware of what has been cut out and code accordingly, maybe having to maintain multiple versions of their programs. Not only that, programs may be bigger then they need to be if they have to make up for missing features of Java, and they may not run as well. Insignia with JENE has a 100% full Java implementation that is small, efficient and embeddable. This ELIMINATES the reason for creating cut down versions of Java. This reason alone is enough to change my mind about Sun not needing another Java virtual machine. They need it desperately to avoid fragmenting Java into multiple incompatible dialects. So maybe Sun is a suitor after all. If they are not they should be! So yes, let us get excited about INSGY and JENE - and let us do so for the right reasons so we don't get disappointed. As the Irishman said, this technology has been ten years in the making, and it will be hard for anyone to duplicate it in a hurry. Go INSGY! Z

To: Charles Broderick who wrote (506)	1/22/1999 3:40:00 PM
From: nic	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1606

Dear Irigator, you have to be careful with semantics here... to me (computer scientist) "A sits on top of B" when talking about layers of code (or hardware, all the same anyway), means "A uses services that B provides to run". So given that JINI sits on top of Java (indisputable), and JENE is an implementation of Java (a JVM), I do not doubt a statement like "JINI sits on top of JENE" - it just means that JENE follows Java specs well enough for JINI to run. Where I think you are going a bit overboard is in interpreting this statement as meaning something like "JINI won't run on anything else but JENE". JINI will run on any JVM that conforms to Java specs - Sun would be shooting their own foot otherwise. Of course it is possible that Sun had to update the Java specs in order to make JINI possible (anybody know?) - in that case it would mean that JENE supports the modified specs. Best, - nic