Re: CA protocol documentation.

[Tim Mooney <mooney@aps.anl.gov>]

Jeff Hill wrote:
> 
> >   No, there's a lot to be said for Java's cross-platform
> > capabilities.
> > Currently, if I want to access CA from java, I need to build
> > the CA library for every platform on which my Java app will run.
> >
> 
> I seems that on a fundamental level this question comes down to whether
> it is easier to completely reproduce the CA client libraries in JAVA, or
> whether it is easier to build and distribute a set of binaries for the
> set of architectures that we use. The effort to support the latter might
> be distributed over several sites if there is some mechanism by which a
> site using a new architecture can build EPICS and then upload the result
> into a central web based repository for use by other sites that may have
> that same architecture. An EPICS RPM for Linux might also help with this
> chore.

I think building and distributing platform-specific binaries are not the
hard parts of the problem.  The problem is in getting the code running
on
the user's machine.

If we could transparently download and install a platform-specific
binary
interface while a user is bringing up a web page (java app, hatever)
that
would be as good as or better than a pure java CA.  But if we require
the
end user to install the interface as a separate, priviledged operation,
we
lose a big chunk of the potential audience.  Most folks at APS aren't
authorized to install software on their own office computer, for
example,
because of computer-security rules.
 
Tim Mooney