[3531] in java-interest
? about package stability, security manager, and sockets
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (douglas)
Wed Nov 15 17:18:52 1995
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 13:16:56 -0500
To: java-interest@java.sun.com
From: brown@sss.iii.net (douglas)
Greetings,
I have been lurking on this mailing list for the
past few months. I have been working with the alpha and
beta kits trying, to the best of my abilities, to get a
handle on what IS Java and how I can make use of it.
I got the alpha kit up and working. Wrote a few small apps.
Then I crashed and burned with beta (geez guys, ya changed
the world around!). Finally, I am up and flying again. I
sorely miss having a reasonable browser (Netscape, Phhhhtttt!)
that can run/load applets from the local file system.
Now, my questions:
Many things disappeared from java.util and some new
things have appeared. The URL code has moved
from net.www.html to java.net. and functionality appears to
have changed. How much can I depend upon the classes located
in java.util?? Are the classes now located in java.net and
java.util going to stay there? Or, do I have to recreate
the functionality which those classes provide(ed). Part of
my difficulty with the Beta kit was/is that some of the
utility classes I was making use of are now gone! I am
concerned that you guys are going declare some more of the
current classes proprietary and move them into the
sun.* class tree. This has already seems to have happenned
once. Is it going to happen again and, if so, what classes
willbe affected?
A review of the beta code indicates that there is/will be
an underlying security system. I seem to have missed the
discussion of the architecture for this system. One of my
concerns regarding the alpha release was the lack of any
type of security system/manager. I am happy to see that
there will be one and that I do not have to design/build
a system which, in all probability, would be incompatible
with other peoples designs. However, where is the
documentation? Where can I find the past discussion on the
security managers architecture? How can I join in on the
current discussion? Will the security manager be extensible
by trusted parties? Will there be a means for identifying
trusted entities by signatures? If so, will the signature
mechanism be extabdable? Etc, etc...
Much change seems to have ocurred in the sockets class and
the layout for servers. What is the current architecture?
I admit to being a bit puzzled about the current design. Is
there any documentation for sockets, servers, and what you
guys are doing and what the architecture is/will be?
Please note: my desires for documentation extend
beyond the APIDOCs provided. What's there is nice but, it
doesn't talk about how all the pieces fit together. Between
the APIDOC and the source code I have puzzled out some
aspects of the design. However, this is fraught with danger
in that my guesses and assumptions regarding the design are
not gaurenteed to be correct.
Java looks good. It's going to have a lot of growing pains.
I would like to get a discussion going about a distributed
computing environment which has a homogeneous base and the
capabilites for heterogeneous extensions.
Doug Brown
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