Limitations of Java desktop applications?

Question

I come from a C/C++ background and now do a lot of C# stuff.

Lately I have become interested in doing some projects in Java since playing around with the Android SDK.

I know that Java apps run in a sandbox that can limit their access to the system.

In a desktop/server application environment what kind of things are restricted?

Answer 1

Java applications are much in a sandbox as .NET applications are in a sandbox. They both run on their respective virtual machines, and do have some limitations as to what they can do, but for the most part, they have a good deal of access to the system, including access to native code through certain calls.

You may be thinking about Java applets, which run inside a browser, and generally will be in a security sandbox that prevents access to the system resources such as local files. (This restriction can be circumvented by specifically granting access to the system to certain applets.)

Here's a section on Security Restrictions for applets from The Java Tutorials, which includes a list of restrictions placed on applets.

Answer 2

Typically desktop and server application run with security disabled. However, Java and the JVM still have a robust type system, so you can't for instance cast to types that an object was not created with, cannot access freed memory and can't run off the end of buffers.