Although eDEP is not focused on software technology, the project does make use of a number of interesting technologies. This page provides a brief summary.
The Java SDK1.4 release contains a technology dubbed 'Java Web Start'. This product allows Java applications and not just applets, to be packaged up for distribution across the web. That is, once Java WebStart is installed, entire applications, with very little change, may be downloaded via a web browser.
The product classifies applications into two groups - those which can run within the traditional sand box, and those which cannot (for example, applications which require access to the local disk). In the later case, Java Web Start allows such applications to be downloaded, provided they have been digitally signed to ensure their authenticity.
The Java Web Start product also performs intelligent incremental downloads. That is, once an application has been downloaded, a local cached version is maintained. Therefore, successive downloads will only be actioned if the actual code has changed.
This product, included in the J2SE 1.4.1, must be downloaded from the Sun web-site and installed on the client PC, before downloading eDEP applications.
The eDEP project has adopted the open source Java IDE, Eclipse. This IBM led open source initiative, provides a powerful Visual-age like development environment. The IDE includes some impressive code refactoring tools, which provide automated support for method, class and package renaming.
The IDE is equally very efficient, offering incremental, as-you-edit compilation techniques. As an example, a complete recompilation of eDEP (140,000 lines of code) requires
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