So today I went to make some firewall updates for a client and the Cisco PDM wouldn’t launch from the browser.

After some troubleshooting, I found that the Java VM was indicating an ArrayIndexOutofBoundsException had occurred.

After some checking around I confirmed my suspicion: Java sucks.  Just kidding, well not really, but what I really confirmed was that the PDM wouldn’t work with any new version of Sun Java.  I guess I’m spoiled with .Net being backward compatible. 

Some suggested installing an old version of Java
http://java.sun.com/products/archive/j2se/1.4.2_03/index.html

But lucky for me I was able to just install Java 6 Update 15 and Java 6 Update 7 from Add/Remove programs and everything started working again.

It’s totally true when people accuse MS of copying Java with the .NET framework, but they sure didn’t make it suck like Java.

UPDATE: The version of Java that is working for me is Java 6 Update 6.  You can download it here:
http://java.sun.com/products/archive/j2se/6u6/index.html