This paper describes jADiMA (Java Distributed Machine), a collaborative framework to construct high performance distributed JAVA applications on grid platforms. JADiMA is a system that automatically manages remote libraries used in a JAVA application. It leverages on the advantages of portability, modularity, object oriented model and flexibility of JAVA, while incorporating well known techniques of communication and security. JADiMA allows users to compile and execute JAVA applications which use distributed libraries, without the need of keeping them in the developer and user hosts. The result is a simple and efficient distributed environment upon which applications and data are easily shared and highly portable amongst heterogeneous platforms and multiple users. We describe an implementation of JADiMA as part of SUMA/G, a Globus-based grid environment. We also show experiences of executing an application, which uses libraries for managing graph and network data, on several scenarios with SUMA/G and JADiMA. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.