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MOF Reflection:
Similar to the Java Reflection API the JMI specification
provides a mechanism to discover objects at runtime. For this
purpose JMI provides MOF reflective interfaces to create, modify
and invoke operations on class proxy objects. It also allows
navigating the MOF package structure and allows to query and
update links using association objects.
Conclusion:
The JMI Specification provides a Java version of the MOF. The
specification is led by Unisys and is backed by major industry
players Sun, IBM, Oracle, and Sybase, who are part of the Expert
group for this specification. The specification is in the final
stage after it was approved by the expert group and is available
for download from the Java Community Process site http://www.jcp
.org/en/jsr/detail?id=40. JMI provides mappings for MOF 1.4
and is compatible with J2SE 1.3. Some existing specifications
are already banking on JMI or are using the JMI technology. The
JSR 69 Java API for OLAP, which defines a Java API for OLAP
objects, uses JMI to generate interfaces. The Java Data Mining
API discussed in a previous article on JavaBoutique uses JMI to generate the
data mining APIs. Sun’s netBeans already implements the JMI
specification in its Metadata Repository Project. SAP NetWeaver
has a Metamodel Repository (MMR) which has a JMI implementation.
As the need for integrating systems increase, the demand for
common, unified modeling mechanisms like JMI and MOF will
increase. Data extraction tools might solve the data integration
problems today, but as the data volume increases and systems
become more complicated metadata models might be the only way to
integrate systems
Benoy Jose is a web
developer with over six years of experience in J2EE and
Microsoft technologies. He is a Sun Certified programmer and
enjoys writing technical and non-technical articles for various
magazines.
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