Reducing Java internet project risks
Tomáš Hrúz, Matthias Hirsch‐Hoffmann, Wilhelm Gruissem, Philip Zimmermann · 2006
A major risk for Internet software projects which have server and client components are decisions related to availability and features on client computers in the user community. Specifically, bioinformatics software developers intending to use Java face critical decisions about which Java version to implement, but few statistics are available about Java presence on user machines. To obtain this information, we implemented a measurement system to detect the presence, functionality and version of Java Virtual Machines on client computers of a large base of users from the biology community. We show that our system effectively collects the necessary information and provides decision-relevant statistics. Measurements performed on 1753 client computers showed that Java presence is high and dominated by the most recent Java versions. The proposed empirical approach can be used to reduce decision risks in any type of Internet software project with low level of control on client equipment and high demands on client interaction and performance. More details together with source code and measurement results can be obtained from the J-vestigator survey page (https://www.genevestigator.ethz.ch/index.php?page=jvestigator)