Java access to numerical libraries

It is a common and somewhat erroneous belief that Java will always be ‘too slow’ for scientific computing. Two projects under way at the University of Tennessee are addressing the question of scientific computing via Java: NetSolve and f2j. The approaches taken by these two projects are radically different. NetSolve allows users to access pre‐installed computational resources, such as hardware and software, distributed across the network. Using these resources, the user can easily perform scientific computing tasks without having any computing resource installed on his or her computer. NetSolve features a Graphical User Interface written in Java as well as a Java Application Programming Interface. The f2j (Fortran to Java) project will provide the numerical subroutines translated from their Fortran source into class files suitable for use by Java programmers. This makes it possible for a Java application or applet to use established legacy numerical code that was originally written in Fortran. This article describes the research issues involved in these two projects and their current limitations. We also explain how, although using two different paradigms and addressing somewhat different classes of users and applications, NetSolve and f2j achieve a common goal: to provide efficient, reliable and portable access to standard numerical libraries via Java. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.