Notes on tech

Here is an article on The Server Side that describes what are the problems and issues that walmart.com faced when migrating over to the latest Java version 1.5. The walmart.com site handles 7 million sessions and 106 million page views per day. The application runs in a loosely coupled cluster of over one hundred servers. Data is managed by a massively parallel database server.

Here is their conclusion:

Upgrading a production Java 1.5 environment for a popular site is a task riddled with risks that can be minimized or addressed through conscientious planning. This article presented how problems were overcome during a run‑time Java 1.5 upgrade process. Future run‑time updates will focus on JVM—specific upgrades, leaving the introduction of new functionality to the late part of the current cycle, or moving it to the next release altogether.

Except for the problems presented in here, the overall feeling is that a migration to Java 1.5 in a production environment can be a mostly painless exercise. No insurmountable issues are expected when the new coding features come in use. The Java 1.5 upgrade engineers feel that this update will result in performance, integrity, coding and monitoring benefits for the site’s customers, the application developers, and the operations team in charge of the site.