Briefing on NT platforms and developments

Windows NT has become an excellent platform on which to develop and run Java applications for several reasons:

• it is the most widely used Java platform, which leads to quick bug reports and fixes;
• it is the platform on which the best Java performance has been achieved, due to intense competition;
• it has the widest choice of development tools, for the same reason; and
• with Solaris, it is one of the two reference platforms on which Java development kit and Java runtime environment are first available.

Sun often releases the production (optimized) version of Java for Windows NT weeks before the production version is available for Solaris. Unidata plans to support MetApps prototypes and applications on Windows NT.

Due to limited resources, there are currently no plans to port current Unidata applications such as GEMPAK, GARP, or McIDAS to Windows NT/2000. However, some community members have had success with using Interix (a commercial package for running Unix applications on Windows NT, about $300 for one user license) and the freely available MicroImages Xserver package to run the SSEC version of McIDAS. We will be investigating the use of Interix and similar solutions for this purpose.

---

This document is maintained by Russ Rew <russ@unidata.ucar.edu>