Imagine the following: Process A on machine B puts an object into a Hashtable. Now, a separate process C on a different machine D can access that object from its own local copy of the Hashtable -- even after process A terminates and the virtual machine unloads! Now imagine all this is achieved without the use of RMI, and without involving an ORB, CORBA, EJB, or a database. What's the secret? The Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI). This month's tool is the JNDIHashtable -- which, as its name reveals, uses JNDI to do its thing