Re: Java performance on the i ? Good? bad? OK?

[Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Any generic Virtual Machine that is ported to all possible OS' sucks.
> JAVA is a brown liquid that is meant to be consumed, Not to consume all
> of your computer resources.
>
> As a employee of a privately owned company, I would not program in JAVA
> for any of our systems.  I try to stay away from 3rd party applications
> that are written generically.  Native is always better than VM.
>
> Now if IBM integrates JAVA into the MI layer, that would be a whole new
> ball game.
>
>   
Wow.

The anti-Java vitriol here is pretty rampant.  Not to pick on Chris; 
he's just an example.

Java is phenomenal on the i, as long as you use it correctly.  A few 
pointers:

1. Start your JVM and let it run.  Java is a VM which means it is better 
suited for a server, not a start and stop client.  This means 
applications like web application servers or utility servers.  One 
excellent application is having a utility server running in batch that 
sits on a data queue and processes requests.  Remember, Java is very 
nice about multi-threading so you can easily have lots of tasks running 
simultaneously with just one server.

2. Make sure it has enough memory.  As Dan points out, Java and paging 
don't work very well together.  Easy answer: allocate memory to the 
subsystem that Java runs in.  The i makes it dead simple to do that.

Once you've got Java in-house, then you can find all the fantastic 
things it can do.  You can use it to access all the databases on your 
network, for instance.  Or to create professionally formatted reports 
and spreadsheets.  Those are just a couple of things that can make Java 
pay for itself.

If, on the other hand, you call it repeatedly from RPG in an interactive 
job, you will be disappointed in its performance.  As Nathan mentioned, 
Java isn't exactly happy with a CPU constrained machine, but these days 
that's hardly a problem.  As usual, your mileage may vary, but blanket 
statements that Java sucks are at best wildly inaccurate.

Joe