Title: RE: Cocoon for CD-Rom based applications?

Bertand wrote:
>> Actually you don't need to "install" anything (in the sense of messing
>> with Registry settings under Windows for example) to run Cocoon, simply
>> copying the directories that contain the JDK, Cocoon and the servlet
>> engine to a hard disk will do, provided you setup the environment
>> correctly and provided there is a writable temporary directory for work
>> files.
  ....
>> You could certainly run it directly from CD, started from a
>> platform-specific wrapper that would
>> -find a writable temporary directory
>> -setup the environment
>> -maybe check for available TCP/IP ports and manipulate configs
>> accordingly
>> -start Cocoon using the JDK that is found on the CD (assuming licensing
>> is ok) and a lightweight servlet engine (Jetty for example) also found
>> on the CD
>> -launch a browser on the appropriate URL

Well.. *I* would call that "installing" -  but I understand your point.  Its not very "invasive" on the operating system and all the executable program files still reside on the

disk.  Passed that, its just an issue of symantics.  If we did this we already would probably have violated the "you can't put anything on the computer" requirement that Mathias referred to for his CBT products and we would also need to provide an "uninstall" routine to at least remove any config files.

>> I'm pretty sure this works without having to install anything, or by
>> just copying files to the user's hard disk if one wants to get rid of
>> the CD
I agree, in pricipal this looks pretty good.  This is definately worth looking into.


>> There might be licensing problems with this approach though, you'd have
>> to check about JDK and servlet engine redistribution rights.

Licensing issues are always a concern to us - the amounts my company pays yearly to Sun, Oracle, Netscape/IPlanet/whatever, IBM, M$, and their ilk is astronomical.  However I learned a long time ago to first solve the technical problems.  So far, to use this approach I will need to

get clear licensing for Cocoon, the JVM, the Servlet Engine, and whatever database platform involved.  My company already has licensing relationships with Sun and IBM for various products so I think I can assume our business people can come up with a reasonable licensing contract with them.   We also already have CD databases that we have licensed that I think we can get to work here - although I want to check out HypersonicSQL mentioned by Jörn to see if it is a better solution.  That leaves the Tomcat and Cocoon.  At this point the people on this list know more than I do about its distribution - but I would tend to hope the licensing wouldn't be too restrictive considering the philosophy of the Apache project. 

-alan

-----Original Message-----
From: Bertrand Delacretaz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:18 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Cocoon for CD-Rom based applications?


Le Mardi, 17 juin 2003, ā 20:07 Europe/Zurich, Ramsey, Alan a écrit :

> ...We don't mind installing "some" software on the clients computers,
> but we obviously want to minimize its complexity as much as possible. 
> Installing a JVM is probably reasonable, and
> since Cocoon seems pretty "tightly packaged" installing it doesn't
> seem too extensive either...

Actually you don't need to "install" anything (in the sense of messing
with Registry settings under Windows for example) to run Cocoon, simply
copying the directories that contain the JDK, Cocoon and the servlet
engine to a hard disk will do, provided you setup the environment
correctly and provided there is a writable temporary directory for work
files.

There might be licensing problems with this approach though, you'd have
to check about JDK and servlet engine redistribution rights.

> ...So the question is: how do I best package Cocoon for the CD
> deployed applications?...

You could certainly run it directly from CD, started from a
platform-specific wrapper that would
-find a writable temporary directory
-setup the environment
-maybe check for available TCP/IP ports and manipulate configs
accordingly
-start Cocoon using the JDK that is found on the CD (assuming licensing
is ok) and a lightweight servlet engine (Jetty for example) also found
on the CD
-launch a browser on the appropriate URL

I'm pretty sure this works without having to install anything, or by
just copying files to the user's hard disk if one wants to get rid of
the CD

--
   Bertrand Delacretaz
   independent consultant, Lausanne, Switzerland
   http://cvs.apache.org/~bdelacretaz/


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