Evaluation of Java for control system use

The LANSCE Control System upgrade requires conversion of approximately 250 control room applications from a VAX/VMS environment to Sparc/Solaris. Many of these applications must also run from a web browser for access by system owners outside the control room. The Java programming language has the potential for creating programs that can run in both the Solaris and web environments, but there are questions about its suitability in a control system. This paper discusses two major issues in the LANSCE environment: data-access capabilities and slow startup of applications (as much as 10 seconds).