Aug 14 2007

Java 1.6 / 6.0 Update Issue

Categories: General,Web Intelligence Dave Rathbun @ 9:26 am

The Evils of Automatic Software Updates

A few months ago about half of the reporting team at my current client called me at various times over a week saying they were having problems running reports. Eventually I figured it out… they all had one thing in common: automatic Java updates. Turns out that was a Very Bad Thing™ to do. 🙂

As these folks were using their computers it seemed that the Java application was busy in the background checking in with the mother ship. Since version 6.0 (aka 1.6) had been released, the Java-bot dutifully went about upgrading the system. The problem is, version 1.6 of the JRE doesn’t play nicely with Web Intelligence. The primary symptom? You can’t get a prompt window to display.

I have seen this manifest it self in two ways. First, you cannot run queries that include prompts. These can be prompts built in the query panel itself, predefined conditions, or even automatic prompts embedded in the universe. Second, if you have the “refresh on open” property turned on you cannot even click on the “Modify” link to open the document in the Java query panel. It wants to work, and it tries to load, but it will get stuck on the “Building interface” step shown on the splash screen. Very frustrating, and not really a good indication of what the underlying issue is either.

Turning Off Automatic Updates

So here’s how to turn off Java automatic updates. If you look in your Windows system tray (it’s the part of your task bar where all the icons appear that show you how much of your system RAM you’re wasting on trivial stuff like the Weather Bug 😉 ) there will be a Java cup. If you right-click on that icon you can open the properties. Here is where you want to go to disable the automatic updates:

Autoupdate

The screen capture above is taken from Java 1.4.2_04 and shows where the checkbox is hidden. If you clear that checkbox you will only get upgraded when you want to, and you also will not be nagged about pending updates. Java 1.4.2_04 is what you get from Web Intelligence XI (current versions as I write this, that may change in the future) when you first load the Java query panel.

Getting Java 1.4.2 back

Finally, here is a link to download older Java versions. What you need are the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) 1.4.2 or 1.5 (aka 5.0). Version 1.6 (aka 6.0) is not supported by Web Intelligence as of XI Release 2 Service Pack 2.

http://java.sun.com/products/archive/

And on additional bonus: if you don’t want to see the java cup taking up space in your system tray, there is an option for that as well. Here’s a screen shot showing where that setting is:

system tray

Edited on September 4, 2007
It just occurred to me while answering a post on BOB that you don’t really need the download links I provided above. If you remove all of the Java JRE programs from your system then Web Intelligence will automatically push down a supported version the next time you load the java query panel.

15 Responses to “Java 1.6 / 6.0 Update Issue”

  1. Comment by Andreas August 15th, 2007 at 8:49 am

    Nice one Dave, I wonder what exactly is the reason it breaks and when will BusObjects support the latest JAVA version?

  2. Comment by Dave Rathbun August 15th, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Hi, Andreas, welcome to my blog. 🙂 I am not a java coder at all, so I can only suspect that what has changed are the methods for bringing up new windows or dialog boxes. Perhaps there is something different about creating controls on a window. I don’t think I ever thought to invoke the java console and see what was happening while I (briefly) had 1.6 installed myself.

    There are some weird things that happen even with the supported versions too. For example, I have one universe that when I use the “switch universe” feature I have to click the OK button twice. If I have the console active I can see that the first click is generating an exception, and then the second click goes through just fine. It is only for this one universe; others are fine.

    Weird. 🙂

  3. Comment by Irfan August 17th, 2007 at 6:25 pm

    Dave,
    Your subject should be 6.1 and not 1.6 !!

  4. Comment by Dave Rathbun August 18th, 2007 at 1:00 am

    If I remember correctly the version that I got was 6.0, and was reported in the java console as 1.6. It’s unclear to me from the java archive site how their version numbers work. 😕 In any case, it doesn’t work with the current Web Intelligence, no matter what the version is.

  5. Comment by Nick August 22nd, 2007 at 3:47 am

    Hi Dave, this is interesting. Its referenced to some extent in KB 7863195. We’ve seen a couple of WebI issues sorted, by cleaning up older versions of Java on a PC. So for example, I have 1.5.0_03.b07 but had about five older versions on my PC. Even if I disabled the older ones, I could still make WebI crash (this is XIr2 SP2 Fixpack 2.2) moving cells with Right Click/Position. Once I manually deleted the older java folders (didn’t have access to add/remove programs) hey presto this and one other bug can’t be recreated. So was my Java install crocked or was WebI not using just a single Java version…

  6. Comment by Dave Rathbun August 22nd, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    Hi, Nick, glad to see you over here. Welcome 🙂 I will be honest, the way you describe the issue it certainly sounds like it is related. But I am far from a java expert. I included this post because I had a number of people ask me how to properly “downgrade” their java after the 1.6 automatic update.

  7. Comment by Dave Rathbun September 4th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    Edited post to note that you don’t have to download the old version from sun as you can get Web Intelligence to “push” you a new version simply by deleting all of the runtime libraries from your system. That might be a more efficient way to roll-back an unintentional upgrade.

  8. Comment by dj06482 October 24th, 2007 at 8:55 am

    Dave –

    To take what you’ve suggested one step further, I generally rename the “jucheck.exe” and “jusched.exe” files to “jucheck.old” and “jusched.old”. That way Java has no way of phoning home to look for an upgrade. The two files are located in the following path on my computer (a fairly typical workstation – if there is such a thing):

    C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_12\bin

    Thanks,

    DJ

  9. Comment by Dave Rathbun October 24th, 2007 at 9:36 am

    It’s ironic that you should comment on this post, as I just yesterday had another interesting issue with Java on a laptop provided by a client. I could run Designer and all of the client applications fine, but when I would try to modify a Web Intelligence report it would blue screen. 😯

    We played around with it for a while, even rebuilt the laptop using a standard corporate image, no dice. Upgrading the video driver on the laptop to the latest version fixed the issue.

    It’s always something… 😕

  10. Comment by Benny Gran November 5th, 2007 at 2:33 am

    It seems that we will have support for this soon!

    http://boinshort.blogspot.com/2007/11/boe-jvm-16-support.html

  11. Comment by LC August 27th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    Hi Dave,

    Dunno whether it’s related.., feel like want to share our issue with Java. Since even BO Support them self also haven’t find the cause and solution for months…
    We tried to use any version, try downgraded version also no use, still got this error. Currently, we use .Net service instead of Tomcat (because we need .Net to comply with our application), our BO version is XI R3.1 (newest vers).

    We keep getting Java Timeout session error when our user click edit reports from Infoview in less than 2 sec.(keep in mind that setting for all session timeout in our universe,CMC,infoview,web.inf already set to max).

    The thing is that sometime we were successfully edit report (webi rpt accessed from infoview/openDoc )and save back to repository folder,…. but most of the time, the error appear when we click edit button OR even if we succeed go to Edit mode, the error prompted when we try to choose folder to save the report back.

    Any idea why…? I don’t think it is session time out issue, but more on other Java configuration thingi ??

    Thanks in advance Dave for any input will help ^_^

    LC

  12. Comment by Dave Rathbun August 27th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    Hi, LC, welcome. Do you have a direct connection or are you going through some sort of load balancing system?

  13. Comment by LC August 27th, 2009 at 9:20 pm

    Hi Dave,

    whua u so fast, i just post the same question to your other posting, so sorry for posting twice. Since, didn’t realize your other ‘more related to my Java issue’ post.

    according to my BO Admin,our openDoc (our user access report from our customade application,and they access via openDoc URL) goes trough windows Load Balancing, but after that, it will hit BO CLuster (which is direct connection already).

    Thanks Dave ^_^

  14. Comment by Dave Rathbun September 1st, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    You need to make sure they stay on the same cluster machine once they go through the load balancer. We had to set up a separate session cookie so that once the load balancer sent my request to (for example) server 1 it keeps sending me to server 1 for the duration of my session. Otherwise if the load balancer sends me to server 1 to log in and then server 2 for my next action, I am automatically timed out.

  15. Comment by Jon Fortner October 6th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

    I just found out that Java 6 91.6.x) works fine with XIR2 SP5.2. I was having an issue with Java 1.5.0_16 and _12 randomly freezing up on me while making position changes on report objects in WebI (XI R2). I tried removing my -Xms128m settings but that didn’t work.
    I regards to your last post, you can just uninstall Java 6 and it will revert to the last JRE installed. You can also go into the Control Panel, use the Java icon and disable the JRE versions you don’t want to use. There are some applications now that require Java 1.6.x and it may not be an option to uninstall it.