What is JNDI? What is its basic use? When is it used?

Question

• What is JNDI?

• What is its basic use?

• When is it used?

Answer 1

The best explanation to me is given here

What is JNDI

It is an API to providing access to a directory service, that is, a service mapping name (strings) with objects, reference to remote objects or simple data. This is called binding. The set of bindings is called the context. Applications use the JNDI interface to access resources.

To put it very simply, it is like a hashmap with a String key and Object values representing resources on the web.

What Issues Does JNDI Solve

Without JNDI, the location or access information of remote resources would have to be hard-coded in applications or made available in a configuration. Maintaining this information is quite tedious and error prone.

If a resources has been relocated on another server, with another IP address, for example, all applications using this resource would have to be updated with this new information. With JNDI, this is not necessary. Only the corresponding resource binding has to be updated. Applications can still access it with its name and the relocation is transparent.