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In-Depth Information
(refer to Chapter 3, “Existing Solutions”). As it is spreading and its features are evolving,
these shortcomings should be smoothed in time.
•
Installers
. Software installers accomplish the minimal, “one-shot” installation, and often
provide other simple services such as pointing the user to the product Web site, offering
an integrated registration form, and so on. We won't cover them here in detail because
their use for application deployment is quite straightforward. Interested readers can visit
producers' Web sites (refer to Chapter 3) for thorough documentation.
•
Personnel
.This consists of addressing the whole deployment issue, using skilled staff
that performs the installation on users' computers. It is used only for limited user popula-
tions, often working in an intranet environment. It may turn out to be the most expensive
deployment solution.
•
Third-party deployment solutions
. Software products such as DeployDirector and the
others discussed in Chapter 3 belong to this category. Despite being quite powerful, both
in terms of overall reliability and deployment features, these products may be expen-
sive—both from a license fee standpoint and for the effort needed to master them for
first-time use.
•
Applets
. The applet concept is a great solution for the problem of basic deployment.
Unfortunately, the Java Plug-In product is needed for full-fledged applets, and this could
be quite expensive for users in many situations (in terms of download time, for example).
•
Ad-hoc deployment solutions
. Apart from employing a skilled workforce, this is gener-
ally the most expensive (in terms of development resources) but most powerful solution.
We will devote a great part of this chapter to illustrating a practical example of this type
of deployment solution.
6
Table 6.1 shows the main kinds of “off-the-shelf” deployment solutions in relation with some
general parameters.
T
ABLE
6.1.
Deployment Solutions
Deploy-
Java
Needed
Deploy-
User
Deve-
Needed
Installed
Code
ment
Edition
Connection
ment
Costs
loper
Server
Appl.
Adaptation
Solution
Features
Costs
Support
Richness
JNLP
J2SE
HTTP
Basic
High
Low
Low
High
Low-
Medium
Installers Any
Sporadic
Instal-
Medium Low
None
High
Low
/ None
lation
only
