Peer-to-Peer and J2EE

Peer-to-peer computing is a powerful way to build systems. In Chapter 1, "What is P2P?," you learned that P2P is a system in which peers participate as equals in producing or consuming services. You also saw that networks of peer-to-peer devices can already meet many of the requirements to support enterprise applications. One can easily imagine that the applications being developed for the peer-to-peer model would be very useful to businesses. What business wouldn't be interested in collaborative technologies, file or document sharing, and distributed searching?

In this appendix, you learned that J2EE has been designed from the beginning to support networked enterprise applications. Its components offer services using standard and open protocols such as CORBA to access them. It will provide access to services using HTTP and SOAP in the near future. J2EE also defines a flexible application architecture that does not require interaction between n-tiers applications can decide how to best use J2EE resources themselves. It offers a full suite of proven technologies for doing everything from supporting code mobility to handling distributed transactions. The platform is extensible and interoperable, making it possible to create bridged or hybrid solutions. Although J2EE does not solve all the problems left in peer-to-peer computing, it is an attractive platform for the development of peer-to-peer services.