JAF; What, How, Where

What is JAF?

With the JavaBeans Activation Framework, Java developers can take advantage of standard services to determine the type of an arbitrary piece of data, encapsulate access to it, discover the operations available on it, and to instantiate the appropriate JavaBeans component to perform said operation(s). For example, if a browser obtained a JPEG image, this framework would enable the browser to identify that stream of data as an JPEG image, and from that type, the browser could locate and instantiate an object that could manipulate, or view that image.
~extract is from the JAF homepage

How do I use JAF?

As the JAF API is 100% Java to use the facilities it provides you only have to include the relevent .jar file in your CLASSPATH. The JAF is installed in the java home directory /home/java, so the following line should enable the InfoBus API.

export CLASSPATH=/home/java/extensions/jaf/activation.jar:$CLASSPATH

Where can I get more Information?

• The javadoc documentation for the package is available locally.
• JAF is the first released API of the Glasgow project. Components of the Glasgow project will be installed as they are released - if Java Support are reminded, and notified about new releases.
• The unsupported JAF demos are located in "/home/java/extensions/jaf/demos/."