Jdeveloper and JDK

[Rahul Shivsharan]

I'v Jdeveloper in my machine its Jdeveloper 9.0.5.2, it uses JDK from its own ie. I did'nt installed a seperate JDK,
i'm using Windows , if i go to my command prompt and type

javac

it gives

 'javac' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

if i do

echo %PATH%

i will see

C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\system32\Wbem;C:\oracle\BIToolsHome_1\jdk\jre\bin\classic;C:\oracle\BIToolsHome_1\jdk\jre\bin;C:\oracle\BITo
olsHome_1\bin;C:\oracle\BIToolsHome_1\jlib;C:\oracle\BIToolsHome_1\jre\1.4.2\bin\client;C:\oracle\BIToolsHome_1\jre\1.4.2\bin;C:\ProgramFiles\Intel\DMIX;C:\ORANT\BIN;C:\Program Files\WinMerge;C:\Sun\AppServer\bin 

that means my Jdeveloper is taking JRE and JDK from its own environment.
the projects which i am working on requires jdk 1.4.2,

what if i installed jdk 1.6 and if i set JAVA_HOME to c:\jdk1.6 and PATH is i append with 'C:\jdk1.6\bin' will it affect my previous path
which is taking jdk 1.4.2

please suggest me as i want to practise java programes using jdk 1.6 as well as i dont want to disturb my own project settings in Jdeveloper which uses jdk and jre 1.4.2.
can we do that

[Peter Johnson]

I don't use JDeveloper, so I am kind of guessing here. Does JDeveloper get started using a batch file? If so, you can edit the batch file to use the correct JVM. If JDeveloper uses an .exe file, there there is probably a configuration file in which you can supply the JVM location (Eclipse uses an exe and it has an eclipse.ini file).

The other alternative is to create a small batch file that sets JAVA_HOME and adds the bin directory to the PATH. Run that right after opening a command prompt.

Another option is to add the %JAVA_HOME%/bin to the end of the path. This way any apps, such as JDeveloper, that might pick up the JVM from the PATH will get 1.4.2, but anything that uses JAVA_HOME will use 1.6.