Re: EGL, Java and PHP

Dr. Syd Nicholson skrev:

Difficult to be specific, most problems occurred a number of years ago. Recent problems happened in two products of mine.

1. A back up product that used the Java zip class to compress savefiles into files in the IFS. It is about 7 years old. A recent Java update has caused this to fail. I still need to fix this, probably with the 'tar' process.

Ah, a _product_. My guess would be that this particular product has been obfuscated, and that one or more of the obfuscation tricks does not work with the stricter Java Byte Code Validator which came around some versions ago. I have seen code fail due to that.

If that is so, then the blame does not as such go to Sun but to the company doing the obfuscator.

2. I have a product called Fortress/400. A system i security product. This maintained a cache of objects in memory to avoid excessive repetitive I/O and to avoid the requirement for files to be permanently open. Somewhere a Java update caused this to fail ( a hash table problem I think). To avoid creating different versions for different customers on different i5/OS releases and PTF levels I removed all Java. The cache was replaced by a series of user spaces, user indexes, and RPG service programs. This is more reliable and faster.

A rather radical measure, but probably worth it.

I'm a bit puzzled. Caches are common and HashTables are VERY common in Java. Could IBM really ship a Java version where hash tables were broken?

In problem 2. above, I originally used Java because it was easier and had a shorter development time. In hindsight perhaps I should have stayed with RPG.

Well, you always throw a prototype away anyway. Good you wrote it in an easier language with a shorter development time :)

I agree that Java is good language when one gets to know it, and can be quite productive. It is the unreliability over the long term I have issues with. I find it quite disconcerting that software I created that has worked flawlessly for several years, suddenly fails for some unexpected reason over which I have no control.

Well, that happens to everybody. Just see what happened with V6R1 where old programs that has worked for thousands of years, suddenly do not work anymore and for reasons out of your control. Just hope you still have the source :)