Hello, Jörg.
1. The ACC uses the IIOP ORB to contact the server during injection. The default port for the ORB is 3700. The Java Web Start support automatically sets the ORB-related properties to point to the correct ORB address. If you are running a cluster then this includes all currently-active cluster members' ORBs.
I am not sure what port or ports the queuing itself would use. They may be dynamically chosen by default but, if I recall correctly, I think you can configure a fixed port. I think there was a post in this forum about this a while ago.
2. Sadly, the footprint of the ACC is quite large. I do not have handy the full size in Mb. For most people, the objection seems less focused on the footprint itself (the number and sizes of files) and more on the download time for that first app client launch.
3. Java Web Start's caching essentially uses timestamps on each downloaded JAR and the timestamps on the corresponding JARs on the server. In the situation you mentioned, Java Web Start will download only the modified application JAR files because it will detect that the cached copies of the ACC files are current when compared to the server's copies of those same files.
A further comment on caching of your application files... In GlassFish v2 the required JAR files are placed in a single generated app client JAR file, and this generated file is the one downloaded to the client system. This means, among other things, that if one of your app JARs changes then Java Web Start downloads the entire generated app client JAR again. If your app and any library JARs it uses are not too large then this is not a major issue.
Some of our plans for v3 are to (1) significantly shrink the footprint of the ACC itself, and (2) serve the JARs of your application independently - that is, not use the generated app client JAR file for Java Web Start launches. But I know that does not help you today with v2.
As for the alternative solution you proposed, I do not know whether that would work or not.
- Tim
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