Govind Seshadri

The evolution of Java has been truly mind-boggling, and quite unlike anything we have ever seen before in the computing domain. Seldom does a day go by without yet another software vendor pledging allegiance to the Java paradigm. Today, few among us will question the power and flexibility of Java. Still, one may ask, "Can Java, by itself, meet all our needs?" The answer to that question was given indirectly by the designers of the language itself when they made allowances for extending the reach of Java through a standard interface utilizing native methods. So, what exactly are native methods, you ask? Simply put, they are methods which are implemented not in Java itself, but in a different language like C or C++. The methods are compiled into either a DLL or a shared library, depending on the target platform. Prior to JDK 1.1, the native method interface itself var... (more)