JavaBeans Activation Framework
Java Activation Framework, or JAF, is a standard extension to the Java platform that lets the developers take advantage of standard services by allowing them to determine the type of an arbitrary piece of data, to encapsulate access to the data, to discover the functional operations available on it, and to instantiate the appropriate bean to perform the operation(s). It also allows the developers to dynamically register the types of arbitrary data and actions regarding a particular kinds of data. Moreover, it also allows a program to provide or retrieve JavaBeans dynamically in order to implement actions associated with some kind of data.
Free JAF Reference Implementation Available
Sun provides a royality-free reference implementation of the JAF software in binary form that can be used to develop JAF technology-enabled applications for any platform which supports vesion 1.4 or later of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE).