OIT has announced that they will change the way Banner is accessed on Thursday, June 25, 2009. TSO will upgrade managed Windows computers prior to this change to minimize the impact of this change (see utilities/alerts/windows-desktop-patching-1 for details). For full details of this change,please see the announcement below.
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From: greg.phillips@oit.gatech.edu [greg.phillips@oit.gatech.edu]
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 4:18 PM
To: banner
Cc: MGT Remedy
Subject: ACTION REQUIRED: JInitiator switch to Sun JPI for GT Banner
Banner users,
Your Customer Support Representative (CSR) has been given extensive informationabout a deployment change that will impact Banner users and any direct links tothe Banner application. Oracle's JInitiator platform will be !!RETIRED!!and we will begin using Sun's Java Plug-In (JPI) platformto deploy Banner INB. Please read the attached instructions provided tothe CSR group below, if you need or want to know the details on the change.
It is important for you to know that your CSR's will need to act on theinformation provided to them before close of business on Thursday,June 25, to ensure this transition is effective and seamless.
Thanks for your support of this change and for your CSR in implementing it. If there are any questions, please let your CSR or me know.
Thanks,
Greg
--
Greg Phillips
Associate Director
Enterprise Information Systems
Georgia Institute of Technology
404.894.3416 o
404.202.7753 c
----- Original Message -----
Subject:ACTION REQUIRED: JInitiator 'Dead and Gone' switch to Sun JPI for GT Banner
CSRs & Technical Staff,
It is with great sadness that I have to announce that we will be replacingOracle JInitiator and delivering GT Banner solely through Sun native Java. JInitiator had become a very dear and close friend to many of us over theyears...RIP!!!
[ cheering is heard from CSRs across campus ]
Although many of you have been flirting with Sun Java Plug-In (JPI) for sometime now, we are officially going to severe all ties between GT Banner andJInititiator at COB June 25th 2009. ( more loud cheers are heard ) Theproduction GT Banner link will then automatically begin to use the most recentversion of Sun Java you have installed on your machines. If you do nothave a current version of Sun Java installed on your Banner users' machines, werecommend that you push Sun JRE 1.6u13+ as soon as possible using yoursoftware deployment tool of choice - LANdesk makes it really easy to do. Goingforward, GT Banner will be officially supported on Sun JRE 1.6+ with Firefox 3or Internet Explorer 7, here's a guide;
Why remove JInitiator from the equation you ask? Oracle licensed Sun'sJVM 1.3 many years ago in an attempt to provide a custom JVM that Oracle couldupdate and target their enterprise applications at. That turned out to bea huge task to support internally for them and Oracle has since decided toretire JInitiator ( which is still based on JDK 1.3 ). Then there's thefact that JInititator does not work on Windows Vista/7 or any modern platformfor that matter.
Here's how you can confirm your settings today, use the following Bannerproduction link that currently uses Sun JPI;
BPROD7 ? Sun JPI
https://oscar.gatech.edu/forms/frmservlet?config=bjpi
This link will not go away, however, the current jinit production link willbegin to use the same Sun JPI at COB June 25th 2009.
Recap:
- COB June 25th, 2009 we will switch the current production Banner 7 link tobegin using Sun JPI.
- Recommend that you ensure your systems are up-to-date with Sun Java 1.6u13+and are using Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3.
- Retiring support for JInitiator going forward and the upcoming Banner 8 willonly use Sun JPI as well.
FAQs:
What if I take no action because most my users already have Sun Java on theirPCs?
- Even if your users have Sun Java already, we recommend that you removeJInitiator from your PCs because we find that although most OS's supportmultiple Java Runtime Environments, many browsers can't handle more than oneJVM at a time. We strongly recommend that your users only have theversion of Java required to run applications they need.
What if I have an application that requires another version of Java which isnot supported by Banner?
- We recommend you keep the version of Java required to run your application,but also install the version of Java required for Banner.
-mark
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R. Mark Robinson Systems Support Specialist
Georgia Institute of Technology OIT-Enterprise Information Systems
811 Marietta St., Atlanta, GA 30318 (tel) 404.894.9946
mark.robinson@oit.gatech.edu