Collaboration in the Enterprise from the perspective of Anthony Holmes, an IBM Accelerated Value Program Leader (Premium Support Program).

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    Quickr Services for Domino browser JRE requirements

    Anthony Holmes  29 June 2009 08:14:33 PM
    I've spent a bit of time researching what releases of Java an end user needs when they are accessing Quickr Services for Lotus Domino.

    Here's my summary of how I think things work, although I must say there's a bit of room for doubt given some inconsistent numbering of the releases and the fact that the documentation sometimes refers to the JRE and sometime the JDKs.

    *** If anybody thinks I've got any of this wrong, please let me know. ***


    Quickr 8.1 (Domino edition) was developed with (and tested against) Java Runtime Environments Versions 1.5.0, 1.4.6.x, 1.4.5.x & 1.4.2.x running in the end users' browsers.

    IBM's current approach is to test against the JRE that is current at the time that the Quickr release is being developed. This is consistent with the way in which we support Operating Systems.


    After Quickr 8.1 was released, there were a series of updates to the JRE: 1.5.0.1, 1.5.0.2... 1.5.0.12, and then JRE 1.6 was released.

    Quickr 8.2 was developed (and tested against) JREs 1.4.2.x, 1.4.5.x, 1.4.6.x, 1.5.0.x and something that confusingly gets named the "IBM Java SDK Version 6.0 SR7" which I assume means JRE 1.6.0.7.  ***But I wouldn't bet my life on it***


    When a new version of Java comes out (or an update) IBM doesn't re-run the whole test suite for Quickr against a new JRE issued after the Quickr release. However, the practice is that if an issue is identified that is specific to the Quickr/JRE combination, IBM will investigate the problem and if a problem is caused by the Quickr code and it's reasonably possible to do so, there's a good chance that a Hot Fix will be released and that fix is likely to be rolled into subsequent Fix Packs.

    The converse is also possible. There was an IBM Software Problem Report where an issue was reviewed where the browser could crash if a user clicks the back button or a link while the Drag and Drop applet in the Library folder is loading. That was determined to be an issue with the JRE, and the fix is to upgrade from JRE 1.5.0.1 through 1.5.0.11 to JRE 1.5.0.12 to avoid that problem.


    The Quickr situation is different to that of "fat" clients because Quickr is accessing the JRE through a browser. I don't think there is any way to embed a particular JRE into a browser so that the JRE is used exclusively for a product (such as Quickr). With "fat" (non-browser) clients like Sametime Connect a specific JRE is embedded into the Sametime Connect installation. This JRE launches independently of any other JREs installed on the PC when Sametime Connect is launched.


    References:

    The specific version information is referred to in these two links.

    Quickr 8.1

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=3264&uid=swg27011692#24

    Quickr 8.2

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=3264&uid=swg27015852