In thread "Re: The Good and Bad News about Java (was Re: Problems
withC-class languages ( wasRe: SE-book 6.ed))" which I've taken the
liberty to change to "AVM vs. JVM," Lionel Draghi writes:

> As stated by Jean-Pierre Rosen, Java is the less portable langage, as it
> only run on a single machine! Thats why the JVM is so important... for
> Java. Ada is really portable, so wouldn't the AVM be useless?

Whether or not the AVM is useful to the Ada community and beyond is
certainly open for debate.

But, the JVM is important to the Ada community, not just for Java.
Specifically, If you wish to build an industrial-strength dynamic,
data-rich web site with Ada, your only choice today is the technology
of JavaServer Pages (JSP) which is based on Java servlet technology
and the JVM.  You can write Java Beans and Java servlets with Ada
using JGNAT (which I've done) and also, I assume, with Object Ada.
Yes, I know you can write CGI programs in Ada (plug here for David
Wheeler's excellent AdaCGI, <http://www.dwheeler.com/>), but the CGI
technique is terribly slow and very little used any more in large,
modern web sites.  This is primarily due to the fact that CGI creates
a new process on every request.

As far as I know, template server systems (e.g., ColdFusion, PHP, ASP,
JSP) other than JSP have no method for using Ada as the programming language.

Since the JVM that JSP requires runs on the server, a better JVM
could certainly be deployed there with little impact on the clients.
If an AVM could be built which is a superset of the JVM, this might
prove useful to both Java and Ada communities.

--
Terry Westley
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