A programming interface that allows Java code running in a Java virtual machine to work with functions that are written in other programming languages.

A standard programming interface for writing Java native methods and embedding the JVM into native applications. The primary goal is binary compatibility of native method libraries across all JVM implementations on a given platform.

A standard programming interface that provides binary compatibility across different implementations of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) on a given platform, allowing existing code written in a language such as C or C++ for a single platform to bind to Java. For detailed information, see http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/jni/index.html.