Since the release of Integrity 12.0 (now Windchill RV&S), the Java runtime is no longer bundled with the client installer. However, the LaunchAnywhere properties files (.lax) still have hard-coded references to the JRE selected at the time the client was installed. These hard-coded paths become invalid whenever a Java update is performed on the client machine, forcing users (or their IT organization) to manually update the .lax files after every Java update. While the changejvm.exe utility bundled with the RV&S client simplifies this process, it still requires the user to understand why their RV&S client has stopped working, and to run the utility. If the users do not have administrative rights to their client machines (a common practice in large enterprises), the utility is useless, and the IT support group has push a complex update out to the client machines, which can result in significant downtime after a Java update.
Disabling Java updates is a bad practice, since often the updates contain important security fixes.
If the RV&S client installer provided the option to use the JAVA_HOME environment variable for locating the JRE to use, this would resolve the Java update issue for customers who use a common JRE on their users' client machines (which is the majority of my customers). There would be no need for manual updating of the .lax files, and no concern about whether users have administrative rights to update those .lax files. There is no technical reason this cannot be done, since InstallAnywhere can reference system environment variables in the .lax files.
