Version based download problems on commercial deployment

Question

Hi,
Now I'm no IT donkey but this is really annoying. We're a small startup company specialising in Java development for mapping applications (GIS). We've chosen Java Web Start as a means of deploying our product (yes a commercial implementation). When we first used Web Start our test deployments worked great, so we shelved things until later. Now we're about to hit the streets we need to use the version based download, we assumed this would just be a simple addition to the jnlp file plus the addition of version.xml ... wrong, I've now had 3 consecutive days trying to find a solution, no luck, even after reading over 400 forum pages with 'version' in them!!! If I take the version tag off its works!! I've also tried using viewer__V1.0.jar still the same.
We we're due to send out beta version to a number of select customers yesterday, but unfortunately we cannot get the Web Start working with version based download, so we can't. As we're a small company we have a lot resting on this deployment and we really need some help. Here's all the details if anybody can help I'd be very very grateful.
Thanks in advance
Ian
=======================
Snowflake Software Ltd
tel : [phone]
http://www.snowflakesoft.co.uk
=======================
Our application, if both obsfucated and digitally signed
My development machine runs Windows 2000 sp2, sdk1.3, and Tomcat 3.3 (I've tried 3.2* same results)
Directory structure on Tomcat
our webapp is called viewer this contains
index.htm
/app/version.xml
/app/viewer.jnlp
/app/viewer.jar
/WEB-INF/web.xml
/WEB-INF/lib/jnlp-servlet
/WEB-INF/lib/jaxp.jar
/WEB-INF/lib/parser.jar
viewer.jnlp is
TS: 2001-11-22 12:28:05
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jnlp spec="1.0+" codebase="$$codebase" href="$$name">
<information>
<title>Snowflake Map Viewer</title>
<vendor>Snowflake Software Ltd.</vendor>
<description>A Java based map viewer</description>
<homepage href="http://www.snowflakesoft.co.uk"/>
</information>
<security>
<all-permissions/>
</security>
<resources>
<j2se version="1.3+" />
<jar href="viewer.jar" version="1.0"/>
</resources>
<application-desc main-class="uk.co.snowflakesoft.jme.application.Viewer"/>
</jnlp>
version.xml is
<jnlp-versions>
<resource>
<pattern>
<name>viewer.jar</name>
<version-id>1.0</version-id>
</pattern>
<file>viewer.jar</file>
</resource>
</jnlp-versions>
web.xml is
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.2//EN"
"http://java.sun.com/j2ee/dtds/web-app_2.2.dtd">
<web-app>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>JnlpDownloadServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.sun.javaws.servlet.JnlpDownloadServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>JnlpDownloadServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/app/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<mime-mapping>
<extension>jnlp</extension>
<mime-type>application/x-java-jnlp-file</mime-type>
</mime-mapping>
<mime-mapping>
<extension>jardiff</extension>
<mime-type>application/x-java-archive-diff</mime-type>
</mime-mapping>
</web-app>
If you've got this far ... thanks ... any ideas?

Answer 1

Apologies,
Its been a long week ... thanks Mathias, the error message / exception would help. Basically if I add the version tag I get the following error and exception. Unfortunately its an 'unknown' error which make things difficult. If I take off the version tag it works
Error from the General Tab of the Java Web Start -> An error occurred while launching/running the application.
Title: Snowflake Map Viewer
Vendor: Snowflake Software Ltd.
Category: Download Error
Error Code 99 (Unknown error) returned from server when accessing resource: (http://localhost:8080/viewer/app/viewer.jar, 1.0)
ExceptionJNLPException[category: Download Error : Exception: null : LaunchDesc: null ]
at com.sun.javaws.cache.DownloadProtocol.doDownload(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javaws.cache.DownloadProtocol.getDownloadSize(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javaws.LaunchDownload.downloadJarFiles(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javaws.LaunchDownload.downloadEagerorAll(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.downloadResources(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleApplicationDesc(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleLaunchFile(Unknown Source)
at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:484)