For testing purposes, I'm looking for a simple way to start a standalone JNDI server, and bind my javax.sql.DataSource to "java:/comp/env/jdbc/mydatasource" programmatically.
The server should bind itself to some URL, for example: "java.naming.provider.url=jnp://localhost:1099" (doesn't have to be JNP), so that I can look up my datasource from another process. I don't care about which JNDI server implementation I'll have to use (but I don't want to start a full-blown JavaEE server).
This should be so easy, but to my surprise, I couldn't find any (working) tutorial.
The JDK contains a JNDI provider for the RMI registry. That means you can use the RMI registry as a JNDI server. So, just start rmiregistry, set java.naming.factory.initial to com.sun.jndi.rmi.registry.RegistryContextFactory, and you're away.
The RMI registry has a flat namespace, so you won't be able to bind to java:/comp/env/jdbc/mydatasource, but you will be able to bind to something so it will accept java:/comp/env/jdbc/mydatasource, but will treat it as a single-component name (thanks, @EJP).
I've written a small application to demonstrate how to do this: https://bitbucket.org/twic/jndiserver/src
I still have no idea how the JNP server is supposed to work.