The paradigm shift towards networked, mobile, ubiquitous computing has brought a number of challenges which require new ways to deal with increasingly complex patterns of interaction. Autonomous, reactive and mobile computational entities are needed to take care of unforeseen problems, to optimize the flow of communication, to offer a simplified, and personalized view to end users. These requirements naturally lead towards the emergence of agent programs with increasingly sophisticated inference capabilities, as well as autonomy and self-reliance.

Jinni (Java INference engine and Networked Interactor), is a lightweight, multi-threaded, logic programming language, intended to be used as a flexible scripting tool for gluing together knowledge processing components and Java objects in distributed applications.

Jinni's threads are coordinated through blackboards, local to each process. Associative search is used as the basic synchronization mechanism. Threads are controlled with tiny interpreters using a scripting language based on a subset of Prolog. Mobile threads allow Jinni to interoperate with remote high performance BinProlog servers for CPU-intensive knowledge processing and with other Jinni components over the Internet.

The synergy of these features makes Jinni a convenient development platform for distributed AI, and in particular, for building intelligent autonomous agent applications. Jinni's particular strength comes from the ability to easily combine Java based industry standard components and rule-based knowledge processing components using a simple, Prolog-style scripting language.

Jinni's client and server scripting abilities are intended to support platform and vendor independent Prolog-to-Java and Prolog-to-Prolog bi-directional connection over the net and to accelerate integration of the effective inference technologies developed the last 20 years in the field of Logic Programming in mainstream Internet products.

Among the potential targets for Jinni based products, lightweight rule based programs assisting customers of Java-enabled appliances from Web based TVs to mobile cell phones and car computers, all requiring knowledge components to adjust to increasingly sophisticated user expectations.

An intelligent stock market trading agent is a perfect application for Jinni. It can be connected to real world Internet based stock trade services, using Jinni's support for fetching and filtering Web pages.

A typical vertical market Jinni application is integration of medical rule bases with large remote databases.

Jinni works well with wireless, handheld computer based applications requiring the ability to move to a more powerful server for faster processing of large data sets and back.

Jinni is also used as a framework for building educational environments. The synergy between its multi-user client-server capabilities, agent programming and integrated Internet tools make it an ideal environment for building intelligent interactive courseware.

Visual Jinni is a GUI library built by extending Jinni with user defined built-ins and Java to Jinni calls associated to Java events. This enables Jinni to work as a high-level visual scripting language.

Jinni is supported by BinNet Corporation, a dynamic, fast growing company, which pioneers new, exciting technologies and improves continuously current products in order to provide comprehensive industry-wide solutions.