Servers that work, well sometimes. (Java in general)

Member Name: andycharger

Product:	Java in general
Date:	08/08/02 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Works well when In a finished state

Disadvantages: Resource hungry

When you are programming in JAVA, which is one of the fastest growing languages in the I.T. industry, there are several requirements that you need to make your programs work.
Firstly with JAVA, you need to "compile" your programs. This is basically taking everything you have written and making it into an understandable version for any computer to use.
There are several tools to do this and some are better than others but you also need to sit the JAVA application somewhere. It needs to sit on something called a "Virtual Server".
This is a program that does exactly what it says on the tin! It serves up the information as you need it from the JAVA application to your machine.
Again some of these are better than others and Im going to talk about one in particular.
But first of all, let me tell you the best bit about JAVA. ITS FREE!
Yep. You only need to download the necessary components from its maker, Sun and off you go.(www.sun.com) you can build it in a text editor if you want and compile it using a Command Window (that Black box thing that pops up sometimes!).

Anyway, the freebies have to stop somewhere and they stop at servers.
Yes you can get some free servers from the internet but they tend to be a bit twitchy and unreliable. No good if you are building a commercial application.

So name a good one Andy!

Well, Im not saying it is THAT good. Im sure there are better out there but one I use is made by Macromedia. Famed for their Graphical tools, Macromedia jumped head first into the Java Market by buying up a company called Allaire. Allaire made a HTML tool called Homesite and a Java Server called JRUN.
JRUN is what Im concentrating on here.
(I understand if im boring some of you non techie types, sorry!)

Ease to install.
The application was downloaded from the Macromedia website (http://www.macromedia.com) and it is free to evaluate for 30 days. Good if you want to tes
t it out. Once downloaded, the setup EXE was easy to run and simple and quick to install. Configuration took some fiddling around and setting up but the whole procedure took about 1 hour to get working.

Ease of tweaking and modification.
BRILLIANT!
What is good about JRUN4 (latest version) is that it has a web browser console for editing the server. This is great for changing paths and all of the other necessary changes needed for servers. Its laid out graphically which is well presented and easy to understand. Something you would expect from Macromedia. The linking and functionality is simple and well though out with a great logical flow to editing and changing options.

Requirements.
Well, it needs about 64Mb of RAM to work but that is some sort of Myth. I have a gig of memory and it functions perfectly. With anything less than 500 it starts to deteriorate. With the 64 Minimum it states, you are going to be crawling along and experiencing all sorts of problems.
I will work on any of the following operating systems though:
· Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, and Windows NT
· Solaris 7, 8
· Red Hat Linux 6.2, 7.X
· IBM AIX 4.3, 5L, v5.1
· HP-UX 11.0, 11i
· Compaq Tru64 Unix 5.1
· Turbolinux 6.5
· SuSE Linux 7.2, 7.3
Great for cross platform compatibility.

Reliability.
AS I have said, it struggle sometimes on less powerful machines. It also tends to freeze up and crash when bugs appear in your code. If it finds an error and starts spewing out problems, it will stick at a certain point. The only way to unfreeze it is to CTRL and C it to get it going. Sometimes this casues the server to crash and die though.
However, on a well developed and debugged piece of software, it will run quite happily without falling over.

Price.
To buy it costs $899 or about £600 for a licence. This is for one instance of JRUN4 Used in a development enviroment or Commercial setting. You need on
e licence per application.

Overall.
A good server but very resource hungry. Expect to be forever restarting it in a development environment but it is very stable on a finished bit of software.

Summary: