Talon
An OpenPrivacy Java Component Framework

Overview:

Talon is a simple yet powerful component system similar to XPCOM or Microsoft COM. Talon solves a number of problems with these existing systems and is designed to incorporate Reputations (Sierra) as part of its Component factory mechanism. The use of Reputation to drive component selection enables a Talon based system to evolve over time, becoming more powerful. This mechanism is similar to advanced profiler technologies but works with distributed systems.

Advantages:

• Thin factory/component mechanism for managing components.
• Utilizes Reputations to determine how to best serve/create a Component. Components can be served based on interface name, reputation and bias of the requester. (planned for 1.0)
• Simple, easy to use and doesn't require significant modification of application design.
• All objects within the system have a unique URI and can be requested from the ComponentFactory via this URI. This is desirable within distributed P2P component environments.
• Talon provides a central code/project location for standard interfaces (logging, property management, etc). This enables developers to code to a standard interface across projects.
• Maintains object lifetime (pools, singletons, on-demand, etc) without having to dedicate application logic to this task in outside projects.
• Talon initializes itself automatically which eases application integration.
• Written in 100% Java so that legacy languages don't damage the integrity of the API (no IDL, interface based, etc).
• Dual licensed under the GPL and BSD style. This allows Talon to be used within projects from the Free Software Foundation *and* the Apache Software Foundation. Commercial projects may also use Talon as the BSD license is very flexible in this respect.

Status:

Fri Apr 13 18:42:10 2001 (burton@relativity.yi.org): Talon 0.1.0 Released. Downloads are available.

Talon is still in its early development stages. Everything should be functional except the Reputation Management Framework integration.