CD drives

[Kevin]

I am a student working on a project for my schools medical facilities.
One specification that is required consists of backing up data to a
CD-ROM. The course that this project is for requires that the coding
be done in JAVA. So far my prof is not sure on how we can burn to a
CD so we are posting a question to anyone who could help us operate a
CD drive and copy data to a CD using JAVA.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

| I am a student working on a project for my schools medical facilities.

A medical project?

| One specification that is required consists of backing up data to a
| CD-ROM. The course that this project is for requires that the coding
| be done in JAVA. So far my prof is not sure on how we can burn to a
| CD

Why Java specifically?

Is this Prof part of the medical department,
does your school have an IT department?

What is the school?

[..need more details..]

 

[Tony Morris]

I have sincere doubts that this is possible, without the use of JNI.
The use of JNI will be to such an extent that it will defeat the purpose of
Java.

I suggest you write it in some other language that compiles to native code
(as you will be communicating with device drivers) such as C or C++, and if
you really must, write a Java/JNI wrapper around it afterwards.

--
Tony Morris
(BInfTech, Cert 3 I.T., SCJP[1.4], SCJD)
Software Engineer
IBM Australia - Tivoli Security Software
(2003 VTR1000F)

 

[Sudsy]

I am a student working on a project for my schools medical facilities.
One specification that is required consists of backing up data to a
CD-ROM. The course that this project is for requires that the coding
be done in JAVA. So far my prof is not sure on how we can burn to a
CD so we are posting a question to anyone who could help us operate a
CD drive and copy data to a CD using JAVA.

While Java is a fine development environment, it doesn't do absolutely
everything. Due to the stringent timing demands associated with writing
CD-ROMs (and CR-RWs) you'd be better off with an application specific
to your platform. I use cdrecord on linux and it works just fine. Only
burns a coaster if I try to run something disk- or CPU-intensive at the
same time... ;-)
Think carefully about exactly what problem you're trying to solve and
you'll save yourself much time and aggravation.
ps. Nero Burning ROM is a super package for the M$ platform.

 

[Christophe Vanfleteren]

While Java is a fine development environment, it doesn't do absolutely
everything. Due to the stringent timing demands associated with writing
CD-ROMs (and CR-RWs) you'd be better off with an application specific
to your platform. I use cdrecord on linux and it works just fine. Only
burns a coaster if I try to run something disk- or CPU-intensive at the
same time... ;-)

Do you have an IDE cdwriter? You should try out kernel 2.6 and the latest
cdrecord then: you don't need the scsi emulation anymore, and writing has
now become a lot less resource intensive (DMA was disabled with ide-scsi,
this is no longer the case).

 

[Thomas Weidenfeller]

I am a student working on a project for my schools medical facilities.
One specification that is required consists of backing up data to a
CD-ROM. The course that this project is for requires that the coding
be done in JAVA. So far my prof is not sure on how we can burn to a
CD so we are posting a question to anyone who could help us operate a
CD drive and copy data to a CD using JAVA.

The closest you can probably come to create a CD-ROM with pure Java is
to create a CD image file with Java. You would still need some external
software to burn that image to a CD. However, you would have to study
the CD standards in great detail just to create such an image file. So
it would be much simpler to use some external software for the complete
process.

You might also want to have a look at software for packet-writing, like
what come with a lot of the commercial CD-ROM burning packages for
Windows, and maybe for free with Linux (I don't know, I never checked).
Packet-Writing allows you to treat a CD-RW (note the W), like a slow
hard disk. So you could address a CD-RW like a normal disk from Java.

I would also like to suggest that you study the long term reliability of
burned CD-ROMs and/or CD-RWs. The figures aint too great, and might not
be good enough for your medical data at all.

/Thomas