20040803: IDV Java app

Hi Chad-

Kauffman, Chad wrote:
>     Thanks again for a great workshop back in June at Millersville.
> We've rapidly been making improvements here at California University in
> getting ready to become more immersed in the UNIDATA community.  We are
> currently configuring a new server which will serve as an LDM for the
> UNIDATA data stream in the Meteorology program.  I've let most of the
> technical aspects of that fall to our LINUX people, but will be coming
> out to Boulder for the LDM workshop in October.

Glad to see that CUP is becoming active in the Unidata community
again.  I'll look forward to seeing you in October.

>     In the meantime, before we get our new workstations linked up to the
> server running a dual boot, we've had IDV installed with Java Webstart
> in the Windows PC's we currently have in the lab.  I've been able to
> bring other faculty up to speed on what I learned with you guys at
> Millersville.  It has been great fun trying all the applications in IDV.
> My question for you though is when I had our software people install IDV
> in Webstart Java, they installed version 1.0.1.  At the workshop, we
> were utilizing version 1.1b3.  Is 1.1b3 available in Java?  Or is that
> just available for the UNIX environment?  Thanks in advance for your
> assistance.

Following on Chris Herbster's experience at Embry-Riddle, I would
suggest using the InstallAnywhere installers instead of Web Start
in a lab situation.  This is how we ran at Millersville and it
has a couple of advantages:

1) You can load it on one workstation an mirror that to the other
workstations.  I would avoid having it on a network disk and
would also make sure that if you are going to have a single login
for the user of the IDV, that you should have the home directory
be on the local disk.  The IDV writes out preference files to
the <home>/.metapps directory and if you had multiple users sharing
that same directory, they'd be stomping on each other.

2) Since Web Start (by default) will download a new version when
it is available, you might get a change in the middle of the
semester which could be disconcerting.

With all that said, the latest released version is 1.1 beta 3 which
is what we used at the workshop in Millersville.  Barring any
unforseen difficulties, we are planning on releasing a non-beta
1.1 release next week, so if you wanted to wait until then to
load up your lab machines, you'd have the latest and greatest.

If you have more questions, let me know.

Don
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Don Murray                               UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                        P.O. Box 3000
(303) 497-8628                              Boulder, CO 80307
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/donm
"There's someone in my head, but it's not me"    Roger Waters
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