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There are three categories of frequently asked questions as can be seen below. Please select the appropriate link below: GeneralGeneral
- What is the idea behind JAIN technology, put as simply
as possible?
What is the idea behind JAIN technology, put as simply as possible? JAIN technology is changing the telecommunications market from large proprietary closed systems to an open architecture of rapidly deployable services. JAIN is a community of over 80 member companies, specifying over 25 new APIs that target converged IP and PSTN networks. JAIN includes APIs for high-level application development (eg Service Provider APIs, SLEE - Service Logic Execution Environment), Call Control, as well as protocol level APIs for signaling (SIP, MGCP, SS7, etc.). There are many JAIN products being developed in the industry. Indeed the JAIN APIs have been adopted by most softswitch and 3GPP OSA (Parlay) vendors, and are being mandated by carriers in their softswitch and OSA RFPs. What are the goals of the JAIN program?
The JAIN program has 3 main objectives:
How do you feel about the prospects for JAIN? The prospects for JAIN could not be better, after the last set of JAIN meetings it is clear that the industry is wholeheartedly adopting the JAIN standards and bringing forward the realization of the APIs through productization. But aren't today's IN and IP networks based on open architecture? And don't they allow for rapidly deployable services? The IN promise of service portability and rapid service deployment will not be realized until the application and operating environment are defined with Open, Industry Standard, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). JAIN technology does this through the Java 2 platform. Are the Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) such as Ericsson, Siemens, Fujitsu, NEC, Huawei, Lucent, ... also endorsing JAIN technology? Yes, all the main NEPs have endorsed JAIN technology and are active participants implementing the APIs in real products. For a list of Members of the JAIN Community, please review the JAIN Members page. Does any other industry group work in the same field as JAIN? Numerous other industry bodies are active in the same field as JAIN. These include 3GPP, Parlay, ETSI, ...etc. It should however be noted that JAIN is the only group that is standardizing Java API's for the integrated network. I have heard that "interoperability" is the only concern for the JAIN initiative. Can you clarify this? Interoperability is not the primary concern of the JAIN initiative. Interoperability is targeted at protocol to protocol, whereas JAIN technology's main concern is with application to protocol - thereby enabling vendor independence and service portability. How will the industry know whether JAIN based products will actually be conformant to the JAIN API specification used? The official source of JAIN approved products can be found on the Certified Products page of this website. Products featured in the Certified Products section of the Certified Products page will have already been successfully submitted to and have passed the JAIN Certification Process. This process will have tested the conformance of the product to the JAIN API from which it was developed. Further details of the JAIN Certification Process can be found on the Certification page. I have developed a product using the JAIN API specifications, how can I obtain "Certified" status for my product? Once a developer has completed the development of their product and satisfactorily tested it themselves using the Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK), it must be entered into the JAIN Certification Process. The conformance audit under the JAIN Certification Process is carried out by independent Certification Leads. The JAIN Certification Process involves the submission of the log files generated by the TCK for analysis by the Certification Lead. Should the results of the analysis of the log file be successful, then the product will be granted "Certified" status and will be featured on the JAIN website under Certified Products. For further details on how to get your product JAIN Certified, please visit the Certification page. So how do I find out more? How do I become a Member of the JAIN community? Further information can be found by downloading the latest JAIN White Paper which can be found in the White Papers and Articles section of this website. Please also feel free to Contact Us via email. Joining the JAIN community requires the completion of the Java Specification Participation Agreement (JSPA) or Individual Expert Participation Agreement (IEPA). Full details on becoming a member of the JAIN community and the varying levels of participation can be found by visiting the Members page. Who are the Members within the JAIN community? I have a question for one of the Expert Groups... how can I contact the Expert Groups and the Members of the JAIN community? The participants of the JAIN Community & the Expert Group Members can be seen in the Members pages of this website. Each Expert Group can be contacted by email. Please visit the Contact Us page which will provide the email details of the Expert Groups and how to contact the JAIN Community. The JAIN Initiative defines a set of industry standard Java APIs under the Java Community Process. While the Expert Groups that are working on JAIN specifcations often interact with standards bodies such as ITU, currently the ITU does not certify the JAIN APIs. It should however be noted that members of the JAIN Community are participating in joint API definition with ETSI, 3GPP, and the ITU in the areas of Call Control, User Interaction, and Mobility. The common APIs that result from this joint activity will rest in the ITU as the industry standardized APIs. JAIN will typically take those APIs and will author a standard Java API for them through the Java Community Process. What is the cost of the JAIN APIs? The JAIN APIs are developed through the Java Community Process and are an extension to the Java platform. As with all other Java specifications under the JCP, the JAIN API specifications are free of charge. Where can I learn more about JAIN? Are there courses, workshops, teachers, ...etc on this subject? The most up to date source of public JAIN information is the JAIN website, where you will find various resources such as the JAIN Tutorials, JAIN Whitepapers, Press Releases, Events, ...etc. Furthermore many of the JAIN API specifications can be freely downloaded from the JCP website. The specifications and associated documentation provide an excellent resource of learning material for developers. Attendance at the JAIN meetings and Seminars are also excellent opportunities to learn more and would be strongly encouraged. What is Java Technology for Service Providers and how does this relate to JAIN? Java Technology for Service Providers is a set of standard Java APIs designed to serve the needs of next-generation telecommunications software developers. The Java Technology for Service Provider APIs enable telecom developers to take advantage of software development technologies that have already proven themselves on the internet and in the Enterprise. They significantly reduce the development time for new telecommunications applications by allowing telecom developers to leverage the entire suite of tools, test systems, IDEs, already available for Java, as well as leveraging the large pool of Java programmers available today. Java Technology for Service Providers currently consists of two communities, the JAIN and OSS through Java communities. Both communities comprise world-class telecommunications equipment manufacturers, network equipment providers and carriers who are standardizing Java APIs for new telecom software applications through the Java Community Process. What is the status of the JAIN Service Provider APIs (SPA)? At the JAIN Community meeting in Austin, Texas in November 2002, Sun expressed its decision to withdraw support for JAIN SPA, the industry standard Java technology realisation of OSA/Parlay. The primary reasons for this decision are as follows:
Sun had previously communicated its concern with respect to JAIN SPA at the JAIN Community meeting in Heidelberg, Germany in April 2002. The JAIN Community was presented with an opportunity to correct the situation, but unfortunately, the situation still remains. As such, support has been withdrawn for the following JSRs:
However it should be noted that JAIN APIs that are not OSA/Parlay-specific Service APIs that can exist outside OSA/Parlay (eg. ISC, PayCircle, PAM-F) will continue to be supported and promoted under the JAIN Initiative. The JSRs that will continue to be supported under the JAIN initiative include:
Should market directions change (eg. operators insisting upon TCKs and RIs for the Java realisations of the OSA/Parlay specification, and vendors showing a strong commitment to support this activity), Sun will re-evaluate its support for the JAIN SPA initiative. Under the Java Community Process, the JAIN Initiative and JAIN Community members remain focused on defining the industry standard Java APIs for the Communications Industry. How do I get JAIN SIP? JAIN SIP v1.1 has completed its maintenance release. The specification is available from the JCP. JAIN SIP supports RFC 3261 functionality and the following SIP extensions; the INFO method (RFC 2976), Reliability of provisional responses (RFC 3262), Event Notification Framework (RFC 3265), the UPDATE method (RFC 3311), the Reason Header (RFC 3326), the Message method (RFC 3428) defined for instant messaging and the REFER method (RFC 3515). The Reference Implementation (RI) is a fully functional SIP stack that has huge industry feedback. The Technology Compability Kit (TCK) tests complaince of JAIN SIP implementations to the specification. The RI and TCK can be downloaded. There are also public domain applications that run on JAIN SIP, a Proxy Server application and a Presence and IM user agent. You can get these 100% compliant JAIN SIP application. There is also a public domain soft-phone with IM capabilities called SIP-Communicator that runs on JAIN SIP v1.1 you can get this application. Please also download the JAIN SIP tutorial. What is the status regarding APIs for SS7? In the late 90's there was a drive from NEPs to provide standardized programming interfaces to enhance the proliferation of new services; this drive was around SS7. In the early 2000's this drive was complimented with the effort to generalize and enhance these programming interfaces, essentially defining the next generation of these interfaces. As a result traditional SS7 interfaces have be relegated from application development interfaces to integration interfaces, therefore are not viewed as mass market application programming interfaces. | ||||
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