Janne Jalkanen wrote:
It's not about an admin being *capable* of doing it, it's the impact
that an upgrade has on the existing hardware and software system(s).
What exactly would be the impact? All my upgrades have been completely
painless. In fact, JDK 5 is better in performance than JDK 1.4, so HW
upgrades should not be needed. Switching to a new version of JSPWiki is
probably a greater strain on the computer than switching to a new JDK.
Janne,
I think you must believe upgrading to JDK 5 is up to me. It's not. When
I get back to work on Monday I'll see if I can glean the upgrade schedule
for this year. Yes, a straw poll of developers (as you've done on jswiki-
users) will certainly show that developers are fine with JDK 5 -- I'm
myself fine with it. It's not about me, it's about the ability of a
typical wiki site (schools, libraries, universities, non-profit orgs)
to upgrade. There's a lot of old equipment out there, and we're not even
talking about the developing ("third") world, where a 386 is hot stuff.
The impact is that for a very large number of organizations (thousands)
that my client organization is parent to, they are limited by (as I've
mentioned previously) lack of time, expertise, but particularly, compati-
bility with existing systems is the biggest determining factor. To my
knowledge, they (a national institution) have several existing systems
that *cannot* be upgraded because (a) the vendor doesn't exist or has
stopped production, or (b) we don't have the manpower to make major
changes to an existing system (e.g., we have one guy maintaining a really
ugly, fragile system with a million customizations done over a long
period by multiple contractors). And that's why the IT department won't
move from JDK 1.4, nor are they willing to support multiple versions due
to path issues. But beyond the parent organization, requiring JDK 5 may
very likely mean that the child organizations (typically local libraries
and non-profit orgs) will have to use an older version, and will not
be able to use the customized version I've been working on as part of a
hive plan. We'd have to go with one mother wiki approach, which we'd
hoped to have an option *not* to do, both due to load and due to wanting
the child organizations to have a feeling of ownership and control over
their local/rural content (as well as being able to customize the L&F
appropriately).
But I'll see on Monday what the plan is for this year, if there really
is an upgrade plan.
Murray
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray07 at altheim.com> === = =
http://www.altheim.com/murray/ = = ===
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Inexhaustible heaven and earth - the light beyond light,
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