Java Application Deployment?

[SysChaos]

This may be the wrong place to post this, but I figured if anyone could help, or tell me where to go (besides to hell) it would be fellow programmers/developers.

Here's the short of it...

My company is deciding to switch from our current programming language to either Java or C#. (Let's not start arguing that point). We know how we'd most likely deploy our applications in the C#/.NET environment, but we don't have any expertise in house to know how we should do it with Java.

Our current software is constantly being modified by 20+ programmers, so we need some type of setup where the code resides in just one place, and as users need to run the applications, they all pull from that place. We don't want to do "builds" where we release modifications out to the users nightly. Our applications need to be able to be changed at a moment's notice and put into production a minute later.

We have hundreds of users that are all on the same network, but are in different geographical locations. So bandwidth over the network is a concern.

Can we simply host all of the code on our current UNIX server and have users remotely launch the software on their Windows PCs?

Any thoughts or ideas are GREATLY appreciated, as I am utterly clueless.

 

[Bong]

Is there some reason why "applets" would not be suitable for you? That is, the code would be executed by users' browsers, using their local JREs but residing on your web server.

_________________
Bob Rashkin

 

[SysChaos]

We did travel down that road of thought for awhile, but decided it's not for us. I'm not exactly sure of the reasons, but I know that we did write some example applications in both languagues, and the feeling was that going web-based wouldn't do what we need it to.

 

[prosper]

Can we simply host all of the code on our current UNIX server and have users remotely launch the software on their Windows PCs?
This is a feature of web-based application.

I refer your non web-based application as client server application. As I have programming experience in Java only, I cannot prove the function and feasibility in using C# and activeX.

I have seen some web-based application having the feature similiar to client server application and it runs on Internet Explorer. I guess it uses activeX. You search more in activeX and C#.

 

[Ascalonian]

What about JWS (Java Web Start)? This will load all needed software (JRE, etc) and run the application. The application is also cached on the users PC so it will use a local copy of the application the next time the link is clicked.

We don't want to do "builds" where we release modifications out to the users nightly. Our applications need to be able to be changed at a moment's notice and put into production a minute later.

In regards to this, I would recommend setting up CVS to be used. Every developer works on the same one instance and then checks in their code as they move along. What I typically setup is three instances: DEV, TEST and PROD. You do all your development on DEV (which is meant to break at times)... then once it works move it to TEST where it is a stable environment (for the most part). Once it passes testing, then you move it to PROD.