Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Java Programming Language shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Java Programming Language offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Java Programming Language at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Java Programming Language ? Wrong! If the Java Programming Language is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Java Programming Language then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Java Programming Language ? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Java Programming Language and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Java Programming Language wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Java Programming Language then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Java Programming Language site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Java Programming Language , or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Java Programming Language , then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
{{ infobox programming language| name = Java| logo = | paradigm = Object-oriented programming,
Structured programming,
Imperative programming| year = 1995| designer = Sun Microsystems, [Nominative type system| implementations = Numerous| influenced_by =
Objective-C,
C++, Smalltalk, Eiffel (programming language), C SharpJava 5.0 added several new language features (the
foreach,
autoboxing,
varargs and Java annotation), after they were introduced in the similar (and competing) C Sharp language. | influenced =
C Sharp,
D programming language,
J sharp,
Ada (programming language),
ECMAScript,
Scala (programming language)| operating_system = Cross-platform / [Java Community Process originally developed by [Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun's
Java (Sun). The language derives much of its Syntax of programming languages from C (programming language) and C++ but has a simpler
object model and fewer low-level facilities. Java applications are typically compiler to
bytecode which can run on any Java
virtual machine (JVM) regardless of computer architecture.
The original and
reference implementation Java compilers, virtual machines, and library (computing) were developed by Sun from 1995. As of May 2007, in compliance with the specifications of the
Java Community Process, Sun made available most of their Java technologies as free software under the GNU General Public License. Others have also developed alternative implementations of these Sun technologies, such as the GNU Compiler for Java and
GNU Classpath.
Java's design, industry backing and portability have made Java one of the fastest-growing and most widely used programming languages in the modern computing industry.
History
, the Java
mascotThe Java language was created by
James Gosling in June 1991 for use in a set top box project.Jon Byous,
Java technology: The early years. Sun Developer Network, no date 1998. Retrieved April 22, 2005. The language was initially called
Oak, after an oak tree that stood outside Gosling's office - and also went by the name
Green - and ended up later being renamed to
Java, from a list of random words.http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/better_is_always_different. Gosling's goals were to implement a virtual machine and a language that had a familiar C/C++ style of notationHeinz Kabutz,
Once Upon an Oak. Artima, Retrieved
April 29,
2007.. The first public implementation was Java 1.0 in 1995. It promised "
Write once, run anywhere" (WORA), providing no-cost runtimes on popular platforms. It was fairly secure and its security was configurable, allowing network and file access to be restricted. Major web browsers soon incorporated the ability to run secure Java
applets within web pages. Java became popular quickly. With the advent of
Java 2, new versions had multiple configurations built for different types of platforms. For example,
J2EE was for enterprise applications and the greatly stripped down version
J2ME was for mobile applications.
J2SE was the designation for the Standard Edition. In 2006, for marketing purposes, new
J2 versions were renamed
Java EE,
Java ME, and
Java SE, respectively.
In 1997, Sun Microsystems approached the International Organization for Standardization#ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 and later the Ecma International to formalize Java, but it soon withdrew from the process. Java Study Group Why Java™ Was - Not - Standardized Twice What is ECMA--and why Microsoft cares Java remains a
de facto standard that is controlled through the
Java Community Process. Java Community Process website At one time, Sun made most of its Java implementations available without charge although they were
closed source, proprietary software. Sun's revenue from Java was generated by the selling of licenses for specialized products such as the Java Enterprise System. Sun distinguishes between its
Software Development Kit and
HotSpot which is a subset of the SDK, the primary distinction being that in the JRE, the compiler, utility programs, and many necessary header files are not present.
On
13 November 2006, Sun released much of Java as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On 8 May
2007 Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code
open source, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright.http://open.itworld.com/4915/070508opsjava/page_1.html
Philosophy
Primary goals
There were five primary goals in the creation of the Java language:
It should use the object-oriented programming methodology.
It should allow the same program to be execution (computers) on multiple operating systems.
It should contain built-in support for using computer networks.
It should be designed to execute code from remote procedure calls securely.
It should be easy to use by selecting what were considered the good parts of other object-oriented languages.
Platform independence
One characteristic, Cross-platform, means that
computer programs written in the Java language must run similarly on any supported hardware/operating-system platform. One should be able to write a program once, compile it once, and run it anywhere.
This is achieved by most Java
compilers by compiling the Java language code
halfway (to
Java bytecode) – simplified machine instructions specific to the Java platform. The code is then run on a virtual machine (VM), a program written in native code on the host hardware that
Interpreter (computing) and executes generic Java bytecode. (In some JVM versions, bytecode can also be compiled to native code, resulting in faster execution.) Further, standardized libraries are provided to allow access to features of the host machines (such as graphics,
thread (computer science) and
Computer network) in unified ways. Note that, although there is an explicit compiling stage, at some point, the Java bytecode is interpreted or converted to native
machine code by the Just-in-time compilation.
The first implementations of the language used an interpreted virtual machine to achieve Porting. These implementations produced programs that ran more slowly than programs compiled to native executables, for instance written in C or C++, so the language suffered a reputation for poor performance. More recent JVM implementations produce programs that run significantly faster than before, using multiple techniques.
The first technique is to simply compile directly into native code like a more traditional compiler. There are implementations of Java compilers that translate the Java language code to native
object code, such as GCJ, removing the intermediate bytecode stage. This achieves good performance, but at the expense of portability; the output of these compilers can only be run on a single
Computer architecture. Another technique, known as
just-in-time compilation (JIT), translates the Java bytecodes into native code at the time that the program is run which results in a program that executes faster than interpreted code but also incurs compilation overhead during execution. More sophisticated VMs use
dynamic recompilation, in which the VM can analyze the behavior of the running program and selectively recompile and optimize critical parts of the program. Dynamic recompilation can achieve optimizations superior to static compilation because the dynamic compiler can base optimizations on knowledge about the runtime environment and the set of loaded classes, and can identify the
hot spots (parts of the program, often inner loops, that take up most of execution time). JIT compilation and dynamic recompilation allow Java programs to take advantage of the speed of native code without losing portability.
Implementations
Sun Microsystems officially licenses the Java Standard Edition platform for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and
Solaris (operating system). Through a network of third-party vendors and licensees,http://java.sun.com/javase/licensees.jsp alternative Java environments are available for these and other platforms. To qualify as a certified Java licensee, an implementation on any particular platform must pass a rigorous suite of validation and compatibility tests. This method enables a guaranteed level of compliance and platform through a trusted set of commercial and non-commercial partners.
Sun's trademark license for usage of the Java brand insists that all implementations be "compatible". This resulted in a legal dispute with
Microsoft after Sun claimed that the Microsoft implementation did not support the Java remote method invocation and Java Native Interface interfaces and had added platform-specific features of their own. Sun sued and won both damages in 1997 (some $20 million) and a court order enforcing the terms of the license from Sun. As a result, Microsoft no longer ships Java with Microsoft Windows, and in recent versions of Windows, Internet Explorer cannot support Java applets without a third-party plugin. However, Sun and others have made available Java run-time systems at no cost for those and other versions of Windows.
Platform-independent Java is essential to the Java Enterprise Edition strategy, and an even more rigorous validation is required to certify an implementation. This environment enables portable server-side applications, such as
Web services, servlets, and Enterprise JavaBeans, as well as with
Embedded systems based on
OSGi, using
Embedded Java environments. Through the new GlassFish project, Sun is working to create a fully functional, unified open-source implementation of the Java EE technologies.
Automatic memory management
One of the ideas behind Java's automatic memory management model is that programmers be spared the burden of having to perform manual memory management. In some languages the programmer allocates memory for the creation of objects stored on the heap and the responsibility of later deallocating that memory also resides with the programmer. If the programmer forgets to deallocate memory or writes code that fails to do so, a memory leak occurs and the program can consume an arbitrarily large amount of memory. Additionally, if the program attempts to deallocate the region of memory more than once, the result is undefined and the program may become unstable and may crash. Finally, in non garbage collected environments, there is a certain degree of overhead and complexity of user-code to track and finalize allocations. Often developers may box themselves into certain designs to provide reasonable assurances that memory leaks will not occur.http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq2.html#memory-leaks
In Java, this potential problem is avoided by automatic garbage collection. The programmer determines when objects are created, and the Java runtime is responsible for managing the object lifetime. The program or other objects can reference an object by holding a reference to it (which, from a low-level point of view, is its address on the heap). When no references to an object remain, the Java garbage collector automatically deletes the
unreachable object, freeing memory and preventing a memory leak. Memory leaks may still occur if a programmer's code holds a reference to an object that is no longer needed—in other words, they can still occur but at higher conceptual levels.
The use of garbage collection in a language can also affect programming paradigms. If, for example, the developer assumes that the cost of memory allocation/recollection is low, they may choose to more freely construct objects instead of pre-initializing, holding and reusing them. With the small cost of potential performance penalties (inner-loop construction of large/complex objects), this facilitates thread-isolation (no need to synchronize as different threads work on different object instances) and data-hiding. The use of transient immutable value-objects minimizes side-effect programming.
Comparing Java and
C++, it is possible in C++ to implement similar functionality (for example, a memory management model for specific classes can be designed in C++ to improve speed and lower memory fragmentation considerably), with the possible cost of adding comparable runtime overhead to that of Java's garbage collector, and of added development time and application complexity if one favors manual implementation over using an existing third-party library. In Java, garbage collection is built-in and virtually invisible to the developer. That is, developers may have no notion of when garbage collection will take place as it may not necessarily correlate with any actions being explicitly performed by the code they write. Depending on intended application, this can be beneficial or disadvantageous: the programmer is freed from performing low-level tasks, but at the same time loses the option of writing lower level code.
Java does not support
pointer (computing) as is supported in, for example, C++. This is because the garbage collector may relocate referenced objects, invalidating such pointers. Another reason that Java forbids this is that type safety and security can no longer be guaranteed if arbitrary manipulation of pointers is allowed.
Syntax
The syntax of Java is largely derived from C++. However, unlike C++, which combines the syntax for structured, generic, and object-oriented programming, Java was built exclusively as an object oriented language. As a result, almost everything is an object and all code is written inside a class. The exceptions are the intrinsic data types (ordinal and real numbers, boolean values, and characters), which are not classes for performance reasons.
This is a minimal Hello world program in Java:
// Hello.javapublic class Hello { public static void main(String args) {
System.out.println("Hello, World!");
}
}
To execute a Java program, the code is saved as a file named Hello.java. It must first be compiled into bytecode using a Java compiler, which produces a file named Hello.class. This class is then
launched.
The above example merits a bit of explanation.
- All executable statements in Java are written inside a class, including stand-alone programs.
- Source files are by convention named the same as the class they contain, appending the mandatory suffix .java. A class which is declared public is required to follow this convention. (In this case, the class Hello is public, therefore the source must be stored in a file called Hello.java).
- The compiler will generate a class file for each class defined in the source file. The name of the class file is the name of the class, with .class appended. For class file generation, anonymous classes are treated as if their name was the concatenation of the name of their enclosing class, a $, and an integer.
- The Java keywords public denotes that a method can be called from code in other classes, or that a class may be used by classes outside the class hierarchy.
- The keyword static indicates that the method is a class method, associated with the class rather than object instances.
- The keyword void indicates that the main method does not return any value to the caller.
- The method name "main" is not a keyword in the Java language. It is simply the name of the method the Java launcher calls to pass control to the program. Java classes that run in managed environments such as applets and Enterprise Java Beans do not use or need a main() method.
- The main method must accept an array of objects. By convention, it is referenced as args although any other legal identifier name can be used. Since Java 5, the main method can also use varargs, in the form of public static void main(String... args), allowing the main method to be invoked with an arbitrary number of String arguments. The effect of this alternate declaration is semantically identical (the args parameter is still an array of String objects), but allows an alternate syntax for creating and passing the array.
- The Java launcher launches Java by loading a given class (specified on the command line) and starting its public static void main(String) method. Stand-alone programs must declare this method explicitly. The String args parameter is an array of objects containing any arguments passed to the class. The parameters to main are often passed by means of a command line.
- The printing facility is part of the Java standard library: The class defines a public static field called . The out object is an instance of the class and provides the method for displaying data to the screen while creating a new line (standard streams).
An example that better demonstrates
object-oriented programming:
// OddEven.javaimport javax.swing.JOptionPane;
public class OddEven { private int input;
public OddEven() {
input = Integer.parseInt(JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Please Enter A Number"));
}
public void calculate() {
if (input % 2 == 0)
System.out.println("Even");
else
System.out.println("Odd");
}
public static void main(String args) {
OddEven number = new OddEven();
number.calculate();
}
}
- The Java keywords#import statement imports the class from the package.
- The OddEven class declares a single Java keywords#private field (computer science) of type int named input. Every instance of the OddEven class has its own copy of the input field. The private declaration means that no other class can access (read or write) the input field.
- OddEven() is a public constructor (computer science). Constructors have the same name as the enclosing class they are declared in, and unlike a method, have no return type. A constructor is used to initialize an object (computer science) that is a newly created instance of the class. In this case, the constructor initializes the input field to the value entered into a JOptionPane input dialog. The dialog returns a String which is converted to an int by the method.
- The calculate() method is declared without the static keyword. This means that the method is invoked using a specific instance of the OddEven class. (The reference (computer science) used to invoke the method is passed as an undeclared parameter of type OddEven named Java keywords#this.) The method tests the expression input % 2 == 0 using the Java keywords#if keyword to see if the remainder of dividing the input field belonging to the instance of the class by two is zero. If this expression is true, then it prints Even; if this expression is false it prints Odd. (The input field can be equivalently accessed as this.input, which explicitly uses the undeclared this parameter.)
- OddEven number = new OddEven(); declares a local object reference (computer science) variable in the main method named number. This variable can hold a reference to an object of type OddEven. The declaration initializes number by first creating an instance of the OddEven class, using the Java keywords#new keyword and the OddEven() constructor, and then assigning this instance to the variable.
- The statement number.calculate(); calls the calculate method. The instance of OddEven object referenced by the number local variable is used to invoke the method and passed as the undeclared this parameter to the calculate method.
- For simplicity, error handling has been ignored in this example. Entering a value that is not a number will cause the program to crash. This can be avoided by catching and handling the thrown by Integer.parseInt(String).
Applet
Java applets are programs that are embedded in other applications, typically in a Web page displayed in a
Web browser.
// Hello.javaimport java.applet.Applet;import java.awt.Graphics;
public class Hello extends Applet { public void paint(Graphics gc) {
gc.drawString("Hello, world!", 65, 95);
}
}
The
import statements direct the
Java compiler to include the
and
classes in the compilation. The import statement allows these classes to be referenced in the source code using the
simple class name (i.e. Applet) instead of the
fully qualified class name (i.e. java.applet.Applet).
The Hello class
extends (subclass (computer science)) the
Applet class; the Applet class provides the framework for the host application to display and control the Object lifetime of the applet. The Applet class is an
Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) , which provides the applet with the capability to display a graphical user interface (GUI) and respond to user event-driven programming.
The Hello class method overriding (programming) the
method inherited from the superclass (computer science) to provide the code to display the applet. The paint() method is passed a
Graphics object that contains the graphic context used to display the applet. The paint() method calls the graphic context
method to display the
"Hello, world!" string at a
pixel offset of (
65, 95) from the upper-left corner in the applet's display.
Hello World Applet
An applet is placed in an
HTML document using the
HTML element. The applet tag has three attributes set:
code="Hello" specifies the name of the Applet class and
width="200" height="200" sets the pixel width and height of the applet. Applets may also be embedded in HTML using either the object or embed element,http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/applet/applettag.html although support for these elements by Web browsers is inconsistent.http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/applet/mixedbrowser.html However, the applet tag is deprecated, so the object tag is preferred where supported.
The host application, typically a Web browser, instantiates the
Hello applet and creates an for the applet. Once the applet has initialized itself, it is added to the AWT display hierarchy. The paint method is called by the AWT event dispatching thread whenever the display needs the applet to draw itself.
Servlet
Java Servlet technology provides Web developers with a simple, consistent mechanism for extending the functionality of a Web server and for accessing existing business systems. Servlets are
server-side Java EE components that generate responses (typically HTML pages) to requests (typically
HTTP requests) from client (computing)s. A servlet can almost be thought of as an applet that runs on the server side—without a face.
// Hello.javaimport java.io.*;import javax.servlet.*;
public class Hello extends GenericServlet { public void service(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException {
response.setContentType("text/html");
final PrintWriter pw = response.getWriter();
pw.println("Hello, world!");
pw.close();
}
}
The
import statements direct the Java compiler to include all of the public classes and interface (Java) from the
and
Java package in the compilation.
The
Hello class
extends the
class; the GenericServlet class provides the interface for the server (computing) to forward requests to the servlet and control the servlet's lifecycle.
The Hello class overrides the
method defined by the
Interface (Java) to provide the code for the service request handler. The service() method is passed a
object that contains the request from the client and a
object used to create the response returned to the client. The service() method declares that it
throws the
exception handling and if a problem prevents it from responding to the request.
The
method in the response object is called to set the MIME content type of the returned data to
"text/html". The
method in the response returns a
object that is used to write the data that is sent to the client. The
method is called to write the
"Hello, world!" string to the response and then the
method is called to close the print writer, which causes the data that has been written to the stream to be returned to the client.
JavaServer Page
JavaServer Pages (JSPs) are server-side Java EE components that generate responses, typically
HTML pages, to
HTTP requests from
client (computing)s. JSPs embed Java code in an HTML page by using the special delimiters . A JSP is compiled to a Java
servlet, a Java application in its own right, the first time it is accessed. After that, the generated servlet creates the response.
Swing application
Swing is a graphical user interface
library (computer science) for the Java SE platform. This example Swing application creates a single window with "Hello, world!" inside:
// Hello.java (Java SE 5)import java.awt.BorderLayout;import javax.swing.*;
public class Hello extends JFrame { public Hello() {
super("hello");
setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
getContentPane().setLayout(new BorderLayout());
getContentPane().add(new JLabel("Hello, world!"));
pack();
}
public static void main(String args) {
new Hello().setVisible(true);
}
}
The first
import statement directs the Java compiler to include the class from the package in the compilation; the second
import includes all of the public classes and interfaces from the
package.
The
Hello class
extends the
class; the JFrame class implements a
window (computing) with a
title bar and a close Widget (computing).
The
Hello() constructor (computer science) initializes the frame by first calling the superclass constructor, passing the parameter "hello", which is used as the window's title. It then calls the
method inherited from JFrame to set the default operation when the close control on the title bar is selected to
— this causes the JFrame to be disposed of when the frame is closed (as opposed to merely hidden), which allows the JVM to exit and the program to terminate. Next, the layout of the frame is set to a BorderLayout; this tells Swing how to arrange the components that will be added to the frame. A
is created for the string
"Hello, world!" and the
method inherited from the superclass is called to add the label to the frame. The
method inherited from the superclass is called to size the window and
Layout manager#Example in Java Swing its contents, in the manner indicated by the BorderLayout.
The
main() method is called by the JVM when the program starts. It
Instance (programming) a new
Hello frame and causes it to be displayed by calling the
method inherited from the superclass with the boolean parameter
true. Note that once the frame is displayed, exiting the main method does not cause the program to terminate because the AWT event dispatching thread remains active until all of the Swing top-level windows have been disposed.
Criticism
Performance
Java's performance has increased substantially since the early versions, and performance of
JIT compilers relative to native compilers has in some tests been shown to be quite similar. Performance of Java versus C++, J.P.Lewis and Ulrich Neumann, Computer Graphics and Immersive Technology Lab,
University of Southern California The Java is Faster than C++ and C++ Sucks Unbiased Benchmark FreeTTS - A Performance Case Study, Willie Walker, Paul Lamere, Philip Kwok The performance of the compilers does not necessarily indicate the performance of the compiled code; only careful testing can reveal the true performance issues in any system.
In a paper written in 1999 by Lutz Prechelt it is outlined that, statistically, programmer efficiency and experience has a bearing many standard deviations greater on run-time and memory usage than language choice. This paper specifically uses Java as a basis for the comparison, due to its then bad reputation.Lutz Prechelt. Technical opinion: comparing Java vs. C/C++ efficiency differences to interpersonal differences.
Communications of the ACM, Vol 42, #10, 1999
Look and feel
The default look and feel of
Graphical User Interface applications written in Java using the Swing (Java) toolkit is very different from native applications. It is possible to specify a different look and feel through the
pluggable look and feel system of Swing. Clones of
Microsoft Windows, GTK and Motif (widget toolkit) are supplied by Sun.
Apple Computer also provides an Aqua (theme) look and feel for Mac OS X. Though prior implementations of these look and feels have been considered lacking, Swing in Java SE 6 addresses this problem by using more native
Widget (computing) drawing routines of the underlying platforms. Alternatively, third party toolkits such as
wx4j or
Standard Widget Toolkit may be used for increased integration with the native windowing system.
Object orientation caveat
As in C++ and some other object-oriented languages, variables of Java's
primitive types are not objects. Primitive types store their values in the
Stack-based memory allocation rather than being references to values. This was a conscious decision by Java's designers for performance reasons. Because of this, Java is not considered to be a pure object-oriented programming language. However, as of Java 5.0, Object type enables programmers to write as if primitive types are their wrapper classes, with their object-oriented counterparts representing classes of their own, and freely interchange between them for improved flexibility.
Lack of features
Unlike C++, Java suppresses several features (such as operator overloading and
multiple inheritance), in order to simplify the language, and to "save the programmers from themselves", to prevent possible errors and anti-pattern design. This has been a source of criticism, relating to a lack of low-level features and some of these may be worked around.
Resources
Java Runtime Environment
The Java Runtime Environment, or
JRE, is the software required to run any
Application software deployed on the Java Platform. End-users commonly use a JRE in software packages and Web browser
plugins. Sun also distributes a superset of the JRE called the Java 2 SDK (more commonly known as the JDK), which includes development tools such as the
Java compiler,
Javadoc,
JAR (software) and debugger.
One of the unique advantages of the concept of a runtime engine is that errors (exceptions) should not 'crash' the system. Moreover, in runtime engine environments such as Java there exist tools that attach to the runtime engine and every time that an exception of interest occurs they record debugging information that existed in memory at the time the exception was thrown (stack and heap values). These
Automated Exception Handling tools provide 'root-cause' information for exceptions in Java programs that run in production, testing or development environments.
Components
- Java Library (computer science) are the compiled byte codes of source code developed by the JRE implementor to support application development in Java. Examples of these libraries are:
- The core libraries, which include:
- The integration libraries, which allow the application writer to communicate with external systems. These libraries include:
- User Interface libraries, which include:
- The (heavyweight, or native mode) Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT), which provides graphical user interface components, the means for laying out those components and the means for handling events from those components
- The (lightweight) Swing (Java) libraries, which are built on AWT but provide (non-native) implementations of the AWT widgetry
- APIs for audio capture, processing, and playback
- A platform dependent implementation of Java virtual machine (JVM) which is the means by which the byte codes of the Java libraries and third party applications are executed
- Plugins, which enable Java applets to be run in Web browsers
- Java Web Start, which allows Java applications to be efficiently distributed to end users across the Internet
- Licensing and documentation
APIs
Sun has defined three platforms targeting different application environments and segmented many of its
application programming interfaces so that they belong to one of the platforms. The platforms are:
- Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) — targeting environments with limited resources,
- Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) — targeting workstation environments, and
- Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) — targeting large distributed enterprise or Internet environments.
The
Class (computer science) in the Java APIs are organized into separate groups called
Java package. Each package contains a set of related
Interface (Java)s, classes and exception handling. Refer to the separate platforms for a description of the packages available.
The set of APIs is controlled by Sun Microsystems in cooperation with others through the
Java Community Process program. Companies or individuals participating in this process can influence the design and development of the APIs. This process has been a subject of controversy.
See also
Notes
References
- Jon Byous, Java technology: The early years. Sun Developer Network, no date 1998. Retrieved April 22, 2005.
- James Gosling, A brief history of the Green project. Java.net, no date Q1/1998. Retrieved April 29, 2007.
- James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy L. Steele, Jr., and Gilad Bracha, The Java language specification, third edition. Addison-Wesley, 2005. ISBN 0-321-24678-0 (see also online edition of the specification.
- Tim Lindholm and Frank Yellin. The Java Virtual Machine specification, second edition. Addison-Wesley, 1999. ISBN 0-201-43294-3 (see also online edition of the specification).
External links
- Java home page
- Java for developers
- Java tutorials from Sun
-
- A Brief History of the Green Project
- Java: The Inside Story
- Java Was Strongly Influenced by Objective-C
- The Java Saga
- A history of Java
- The Long Strange Trip to Java
- Java Language Specification (pdf)
{{ infobox programming language| name = Java| logo = | paradigm = Object-oriented programming, Structured programming,
Imperative programming| year = 1995| designer = Sun Microsystems, [Nominative type system| implementations = Numerous| influenced_by = Objective-C,
C++, Smalltalk, Eiffel (programming language),
C SharpJava 5.0 added several new language features (the foreach,
autoboxing,
varargs and Java annotation), after they were introduced in the similar (and competing) C Sharp language. | influenced = C Sharp,
D programming language,
J sharp, Ada (programming language),
ECMAScript, Scala (programming language)| operating_system = Cross-platform / [Java Community Process originally developed by [Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun's
Java (Sun). The language derives much of its
Syntax of programming languages from C (programming language) and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities. Java applications are typically compiler to bytecode which can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of
computer architecture.
The original and
reference implementation Java compilers, virtual machines, and
library (computing) were developed by Sun from 1995. As of May 2007, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, Sun made available most of their Java technologies as
free software under the GNU General Public License. Others have also developed alternative implementations of these Sun technologies, such as the GNU Compiler for Java and
GNU Classpath.
Java's design, industry backing and portability have made Java one of the fastest-growing and most widely used programming languages in the modern computing industry.
History
, the Java
mascotThe Java language was created by
James Gosling in June 1991 for use in a set top box project.Jon Byous,
Java technology: The early years. Sun Developer Network, no date 1998. Retrieved April 22, 2005. The language was initially called
Oak, after an oak tree that stood outside Gosling's office - and also went by the name
Green - and ended up later being renamed to
Java, from a list of random words.http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/better_is_always_different. Gosling's goals were to implement a
virtual machine and a language that had a familiar C/C++ style of notationHeinz Kabutz,
Once Upon an Oak. Artima, Retrieved April 29,
2007.. The first public implementation was Java 1.0 in 1995. It promised "
Write once, run anywhere" (WORA), providing no-cost runtimes on popular platforms. It was fairly secure and its security was configurable, allowing network and file access to be restricted. Major web browsers soon incorporated the ability to run secure Java
applets within web pages. Java became popular quickly. With the advent of
Java 2, new versions had multiple configurations built for different types of platforms. For example,
J2EE was for enterprise applications and the greatly stripped down version
J2ME was for mobile applications.
J2SE was the designation for the Standard Edition. In 2006, for marketing purposes, new
J2 versions were renamed
Java EE,
Java ME, and
Java SE, respectively.
In 1997, Sun Microsystems approached the International Organization for Standardization#ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 and later the Ecma International to formalize Java, but it soon withdrew from the process. Java Study Group Why Java™ Was - Not - Standardized Twice What is ECMA--and why Microsoft cares Java remains a
de facto standard that is controlled through the
Java Community Process. Java Community Process website At one time, Sun made most of its Java implementations available without charge although they were
closed source, proprietary software. Sun's revenue from Java was generated by the selling of licenses for specialized products such as the Java Enterprise System. Sun distinguishes between its Software Development Kit and HotSpot which is a subset of the SDK, the primary distinction being that in the JRE, the compiler, utility programs, and many necessary header files are not present.
On
13 November 2006, Sun released much of Java as free software under the terms of the
GNU General Public License (GPL). On 8 May
2007 Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code open source, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright.http://open.itworld.com/4915/070508opsjava/page_1.html
Philosophy
Primary goals
There were five primary goals in the creation of the Java language:
It should use the object-oriented programming methodology.
It should allow the same program to be execution (computers) on multiple operating systems.
It should contain built-in support for using computer networks.
It should be designed to execute code from remote procedure calls securely.
It should be easy to use by selecting what were considered the good parts of other object-oriented languages.
Platform independence
One characteristic, Cross-platform, means that
computer programs written in the Java language must run similarly on any supported hardware/operating-system platform. One should be able to write a program once, compile it once, and run it anywhere.
This is achieved by most Java compilers by compiling the Java language code
halfway (to Java bytecode) – simplified machine instructions specific to the Java platform. The code is then run on a virtual machine (VM), a program written in native code on the host hardware that
Interpreter (computing) and executes generic Java bytecode. (In some JVM versions, bytecode can also be compiled to native code, resulting in faster execution.) Further, standardized libraries are provided to allow access to features of the host machines (such as graphics,
thread (computer science) and Computer network) in unified ways. Note that, although there is an explicit compiling stage, at some point, the Java bytecode is interpreted or converted to native machine code by the Just-in-time compilation.
The first implementations of the language used an interpreted virtual machine to achieve Porting. These implementations produced programs that ran more slowly than programs compiled to native executables, for instance written in C or C++, so the language suffered a reputation for poor performance. More recent JVM implementations produce programs that run significantly faster than before, using multiple techniques.
The first technique is to simply compile directly into native code like a more traditional compiler. There are implementations of Java compilers that translate the Java language code to native object code, such as GCJ, removing the intermediate bytecode stage. This achieves good performance, but at the expense of portability; the output of these compilers can only be run on a single
Computer architecture. Another technique, known as
just-in-time compilation (JIT), translates the Java bytecodes into native code at the time that the program is run which results in a program that executes faster than interpreted code but also incurs compilation overhead during execution. More sophisticated VMs use
dynamic recompilation, in which the VM can analyze the behavior of the running program and selectively recompile and optimize critical parts of the program. Dynamic recompilation can achieve optimizations superior to static compilation because the dynamic compiler can base optimizations on knowledge about the runtime environment and the set of loaded classes, and can identify the
hot spots (parts of the program, often inner loops, that take up most of execution time). JIT compilation and dynamic recompilation allow Java programs to take advantage of the speed of native code without losing portability.
Implementations
Sun Microsystems officially licenses the Java Standard Edition platform for Microsoft Windows,
Linux, and Solaris (operating system). Through a network of third-party vendors and licensees,http://java.sun.com/javase/licensees.jsp alternative Java environments are available for these and other platforms. To qualify as a certified Java licensee, an implementation on any particular platform must pass a rigorous suite of validation and compatibility tests. This method enables a guaranteed level of compliance and platform through a trusted set of commercial and non-commercial partners.
Sun's trademark license for usage of the Java brand insists that all implementations be "compatible". This resulted in a legal dispute with Microsoft after Sun claimed that the Microsoft implementation did not support the Java remote method invocation and
Java Native Interface interfaces and had added platform-specific features of their own. Sun sued and won both damages in 1997 (some $20 million) and a court order enforcing the terms of the license from Sun. As a result, Microsoft no longer ships Java with
Microsoft Windows, and in recent versions of Windows,
Internet Explorer cannot support Java applets without a third-party plugin. However, Sun and others have made available Java run-time systems at no cost for those and other versions of Windows.
Platform-independent Java is essential to the
Java Enterprise Edition strategy, and an even more rigorous validation is required to certify an implementation. This environment enables portable server-side applications, such as Web services, servlets, and
Enterprise JavaBeans, as well as with
Embedded systems based on OSGi, using Embedded Java environments. Through the new GlassFish project, Sun is working to create a fully functional, unified open-source implementation of the Java EE technologies.
Automatic memory management
One of the ideas behind Java's automatic memory management model is that programmers be spared the burden of having to perform manual memory management. In some languages the programmer allocates memory for the creation of objects stored on the heap and the responsibility of later deallocating that memory also resides with the programmer. If the programmer forgets to deallocate memory or writes code that fails to do so, a
memory leak occurs and the program can consume an arbitrarily large amount of memory. Additionally, if the program attempts to deallocate the region of memory more than once, the result is undefined and the program may become unstable and may crash. Finally, in non garbage collected environments, there is a certain degree of overhead and complexity of user-code to track and finalize allocations. Often developers may box themselves into certain designs to provide reasonable assurances that memory leaks will not occur.http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq2.html#memory-leaks
In Java, this potential problem is avoided by
automatic garbage collection. The programmer determines when objects are created, and the Java runtime is responsible for managing the
object lifetime. The program or other objects can reference an object by holding a reference to it (which, from a low-level point of view, is its address on the heap). When no references to an object remain, the Java garbage collector automatically deletes the unreachable object, freeing memory and preventing a memory leak. Memory leaks may still occur if a programmer's code holds a reference to an object that is no longer needed—in other words, they can still occur but at higher conceptual levels.
The use of garbage collection in a language can also affect programming paradigms. If, for example, the developer assumes that the cost of memory allocation/recollection is low, they may choose to more freely construct objects instead of pre-initializing, holding and reusing them. With the small cost of potential performance penalties (inner-loop construction of large/complex objects), this facilitates thread-isolation (no need to synchronize as different threads work on different object instances) and data-hiding. The use of transient immutable value-objects minimizes side-effect programming.
Comparing Java and C++, it is possible in C++ to implement similar functionality (for example, a memory management model for specific classes can be designed in C++ to improve speed and lower memory fragmentation considerably), with the possible cost of adding comparable runtime overhead to that of Java's garbage collector, and of added development time and application complexity if one favors manual implementation over using an existing third-party library. In Java, garbage collection is built-in and virtually invisible to the developer. That is, developers may have no notion of when garbage collection will take place as it may not necessarily correlate with any actions being explicitly performed by the code they write. Depending on intended application, this can be beneficial or disadvantageous: the programmer is freed from performing low-level tasks, but at the same time loses the option of writing lower level code.
Java does not support
pointer (computing) as is supported in, for example, C++. This is because the garbage collector may relocate referenced objects, invalidating such pointers. Another reason that Java forbids this is that type safety and security can no longer be guaranteed if arbitrary manipulation of pointers is allowed.
Syntax
The syntax of Java is largely derived from C++. However, unlike C++, which combines the syntax for structured, generic, and object-oriented programming, Java was built exclusively as an object oriented language. As a result, almost everything is an object and all code is written inside a class. The exceptions are the intrinsic data types (ordinal and real numbers, boolean values, and characters), which are not classes for performance reasons.
This is a minimal
Hello world program in Java:
// Hello.javapublic class Hello { public static void main(String args) {
System.out.println("Hello, World!");
}
}
To execute a Java program, the code is saved as a file named Hello.java. It must first be compiled into bytecode using a
Java compiler, which produces a file named Hello.class. This class is then
launched.
The above example merits a bit of explanation.
- All executable statements in Java are written inside a class, including stand-alone programs.
- Source files are by convention named the same as the class they contain, appending the mandatory suffix .java. A class which is declared public is required to follow this convention. (In this case, the class Hello is public, therefore the source must be stored in a file called Hello.java).
- The compiler will generate a class file for each class defined in the source file. The name of the class file is the name of the class, with .class appended. For class file generation, anonymous classes are treated as if their name was the concatenation of the name of their enclosing class, a $, and an integer.
- The Java keywords public denotes that a method can be called from code in other classes, or that a class may be used by classes outside the class hierarchy.
- The keyword static indicates that the method is a class method, associated with the class rather than object instances.
- The keyword void indicates that the main method does not return any value to the caller.
- The method name "main" is not a keyword in the Java language. It is simply the name of the method the Java launcher calls to pass control to the program. Java classes that run in managed environments such as applets and Enterprise Java Beans do not use or need a main() method.
- The main method must accept an array of objects. By convention, it is referenced as args although any other legal identifier name can be used. Since Java 5, the main method can also use varargs, in the form of public static void main(String... args), allowing the main method to be invoked with an arbitrary number of String arguments. The effect of this alternate declaration is semantically identical (the args parameter is still an array of String objects), but allows an alternate syntax for creating and passing the array.
- The Java launcher launches Java by loading a given class (specified on the command line) and starting its public static void main(String) method. Stand-alone programs must declare this method explicitly. The String args parameter is an array of objects containing any arguments passed to the class. The parameters to main are often passed by means of a command line.
- The printing facility is part of the Java standard library: The class defines a public static field called . The out object is an instance of the class and provides the method for displaying data to the screen while creating a new line (standard streams).
An example that better demonstrates object-oriented programming:
// OddEven.javaimport javax.swing.JOptionPane;
public class OddEven { private int input;
public OddEven() {
input = Integer.parseInt(JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Please Enter A Number"));
}
public void calculate() {
if (input % 2 == 0)
System.out.println("Even");
else
System.out.println("Odd");
}
public static void main(String args) {
OddEven number = new OddEven();
number.calculate();
}
}
- The Java keywords#import statement imports the class from the package.
- The OddEven class declares a single Java keywords#private field (computer science) of type int named input. Every instance of the OddEven class has its own copy of the input field. The private declaration means that no other class can access (read or write) the input field.
- OddEven() is a public constructor (computer science). Constructors have the same name as the enclosing class they are declared in, and unlike a method, have no return type. A constructor is used to initialize an object (computer science) that is a newly created instance of the class. In this case, the constructor initializes the input field to the value entered into a JOptionPane input dialog. The dialog returns a String which is converted to an int by the method.
- The calculate() method is declared without the static keyword. This means that the method is invoked using a specific instance of the OddEven class. (The reference (computer science) used to invoke the method is passed as an undeclared parameter of type OddEven named Java keywords#this.) The method tests the expression input % 2 == 0 using the Java keywords#if keyword to see if the remainder of dividing the input field belonging to the instance of the class by two is zero. If this expression is true, then it prints Even; if this expression is false it prints Odd. (The input field can be equivalently accessed as this.input, which explicitly uses the undeclared this parameter.)
- OddEven number = new OddEven(); declares a local object reference (computer science) variable in the main method named number. This variable can hold a reference to an object of type OddEven. The declaration initializes number by first creating an instance of the OddEven class, using the Java keywords#new keyword and the OddEven() constructor, and then assigning this instance to the variable.
- The statement number.calculate(); calls the calculate method. The instance of OddEven object referenced by the number local variable is used to invoke the method and passed as the undeclared this parameter to the calculate method.
- For simplicity, error handling has been ignored in this example. Entering a value that is not a number will cause the program to crash. This can be avoided by catching and handling the thrown by Integer.parseInt(String).
Applet
Java applets are programs that are embedded in other applications, typically in a Web page displayed in a
Web browser.
// Hello.javaimport java.applet.Applet;import java.awt.Graphics;
public class Hello extends Applet { public void paint(Graphics gc) {
gc.drawString("Hello, world!", 65, 95);
}
}
The
import statements direct the Java compiler to include the
and
classes in the compilation. The import statement allows these classes to be referenced in the
source code using the
simple class name (i.e. Applet) instead of the
fully qualified class name (i.e. java.applet.Applet).
The Hello class
extends (subclass (computer science)) the
Applet class; the Applet class provides the framework for the host application to display and control the Object lifetime of the applet. The Applet class is an Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) , which provides the applet with the capability to display a graphical user interface (GUI) and respond to user
event-driven programming.
The Hello class
method overriding (programming) the
method inherited from the
superclass (computer science) to provide the code to display the applet. The paint() method is passed a
Graphics object that contains the graphic context used to display the applet. The paint() method calls the graphic context
method to display the
"Hello, world!" string at a
pixel offset of (
65, 95) from the upper-left corner in the applet's display.
Hello World Applet
An applet is placed in an HTML document using the
HTML element. The applet tag has three attributes set:
code="Hello" specifies the name of the Applet class and
width="200" height="200" sets the pixel width and height of the applet. Applets may also be embedded in HTML using either the object or embed element,http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/applet/applettag.html although support for these elements by Web browsers is inconsistent.http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/deployment/applet/mixedbrowser.html However, the applet tag is deprecated, so the object tag is preferred where supported.
The host application, typically a Web browser, instantiates the
Hello applet and creates an for the applet. Once the applet has initialized itself, it is added to the AWT display hierarchy. The paint method is called by the AWT event dispatching thread whenever the display needs the applet to draw itself.
Servlet
Java Servlet technology provides Web developers with a simple, consistent mechanism for extending the functionality of a Web server and for accessing existing business systems. Servlets are server-side Java EE components that generate responses (typically
HTML pages) to requests (typically
HTTP requests) from client (computing)s. A servlet can almost be thought of as an applet that runs on the server side—without a face.
// Hello.javaimport java.io.*;import javax.servlet.*;
public class Hello extends GenericServlet { public void service(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException {
response.setContentType("text/html");
final PrintWriter pw = response.getWriter();
pw.println("Hello, world!");
pw.close();
}
}
The
import statements direct the Java compiler to include all of the public classes and
interface (Java) from the
and
Java package in the compilation.
The
Hello class
extends the
class; the GenericServlet class provides the interface for the server (computing) to forward requests to the servlet and control the servlet's lifecycle.
The Hello class overrides the
method defined by the
Interface (Java) to provide the code for the service request handler. The service() method is passed a
object that contains the request from the client and a
object used to create the response returned to the client. The service() method declares that it
throws the
exception handling and if a problem prevents it from responding to the request.
The
method in the response object is called to set the
MIME content type of the returned data to
"text/html". The
method in the response returns a
object that is used to write the data that is sent to the client. The
method is called to write the
"Hello, world!" string to the response and then the
method is called to close the print writer, which causes the data that has been written to the stream to be returned to the client.
JavaServer Page
JavaServer Pages (JSPs) are
server-side Java EE components that generate responses, typically
HTML pages, to
HTTP requests from client (computing)s. JSPs embed Java code in an HTML page by using the special delimiters . A JSP is compiled to a Java
servlet, a Java application in its own right, the first time it is accessed. After that, the generated servlet creates the response.
Swing application
Swing is a graphical user interface library (computer science) for the Java SE platform. This example Swing application creates a single window with "Hello, world!" inside:
// Hello.java (Java SE 5)import java.awt.BorderLayout;import javax.swing.*;
public class Hello extends JFrame { public Hello() {
super("hello");
setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
getContentPane().setLayout(new BorderLayout());
getContentPane().add(new JLabel("Hello, world!"));
pack();
}
public static void main(String args) {
new Hello().setVisible(true);
}
}
The first
import statement directs the Java compiler to include the class from the package in the compilation; the second
import includes all of the public classes and interfaces from the
package.
The
Hello class
extends the
class; the JFrame class implements a window (computing) with a title bar and a close
Widget (computing).
The
Hello() constructor (computer science) initializes the frame by first calling the superclass constructor, passing the parameter "hello", which is used as the window's title. It then calls the
method inherited from JFrame to set the default operation when the close control on the title bar is selected to
— this causes the JFrame to be disposed of when the frame is closed (as opposed to merely hidden), which allows the JVM to exit and the program to terminate. Next, the layout of the frame is set to a BorderLayout; this tells Swing how to arrange the components that will be added to the frame. A
is created for the string
"Hello, world!" and the
method inherited from the superclass is called to add the label to the frame. The
method inherited from the superclass is called to size the window and Layout manager#Example in Java Swing its contents, in the manner indicated by the BorderLayout.
The
main() method is called by the JVM when the program starts. It Instance (programming) a new
Hello frame and causes it to be displayed by calling the
method inherited from the superclass with the boolean parameter
true. Note that once the frame is displayed, exiting the main method does not cause the program to terminate because the AWT
event dispatching thread remains active until all of the Swing top-level windows have been disposed.
Criticism
Performance
Java's performance has increased substantially since the early versions, and performance of
JIT compilers relative to native compilers has in some tests been shown to be quite similar. Performance of Java versus C++, J.P.Lewis and Ulrich Neumann, Computer Graphics and Immersive Technology Lab,
University of Southern California The Java is Faster than C++ and C++ Sucks Unbiased Benchmark FreeTTS - A Performance Case Study, Willie Walker, Paul Lamere, Philip Kwok The performance of the compilers does not necessarily indicate the performance of the compiled code; only careful testing can reveal the true performance issues in any system.
In a paper written in 1999 by Lutz Prechelt it is outlined that, statistically, programmer efficiency and experience has a bearing many standard deviations greater on run-time and memory usage than language choice. This paper specifically uses Java as a basis for the comparison, due to its then bad reputation.Lutz Prechelt. Technical opinion: comparing Java vs. C/C++ efficiency differences to interpersonal differences.
Communications of the ACM, Vol 42, #10, 1999
Look and feel
The default look and feel of
Graphical User Interface applications written in Java using the
Swing (Java) toolkit is very different from native applications. It is possible to specify a different look and feel through the
pluggable look and feel system of Swing. Clones of
Microsoft Windows,
GTK and Motif (widget toolkit) are supplied by Sun. Apple Computer also provides an
Aqua (theme) look and feel for
Mac OS X. Though prior implementations of these look and feels have been considered lacking, Swing in Java SE 6 addresses this problem by using more native Widget (computing) drawing routines of the underlying platforms. Alternatively, third party toolkits such as
wx4j or
Standard Widget Toolkit may be used for increased integration with the native windowing system.
Object orientation caveat
As in C++ and some other object-oriented languages, variables of Java's
primitive types are not objects. Primitive types store their values in the
Stack-based memory allocation rather than being references to values. This was a conscious decision by Java's designers for performance reasons. Because of this, Java is not considered to be a pure object-oriented programming language. However, as of Java 5.0, Object type enables programmers to write as if primitive types are their wrapper classes, with their object-oriented counterparts representing classes of their own, and freely interchange between them for improved flexibility.
Lack of features
Unlike C++, Java suppresses several features (such as
operator overloading and
multiple inheritance), in order to simplify the language, and to "save the programmers from themselves", to prevent possible errors and anti-pattern design. This has been a source of criticism, relating to a lack of low-level features and some of these may be worked around.
Resources
Java Runtime Environment
The Java Runtime Environment, or
JRE, is the software required to run any
Application software deployed on the Java Platform. End-users commonly use a JRE in
software packages and Web browser plugins. Sun also distributes a superset of the JRE called the Java 2 SDK (more commonly known as the JDK), which includes development tools such as the
Java compiler, Javadoc,
JAR (software) and
debugger.
One of the unique advantages of the concept of a runtime engine is that errors (exceptions) should not 'crash' the system. Moreover, in runtime engine environments such as Java there exist tools that attach to the runtime engine and every time that an exception of interest occurs they record debugging information that existed in memory at the time the exception was thrown (stack and heap values). These
Automated Exception Handling tools provide 'root-cause' information for exceptions in Java programs that run in production, testing or development environments.
Components
- Java Library (computer science) are the compiled byte codes of source code developed by the JRE implementor to support application development in Java. Examples of these libraries are:
- The core libraries, which include:
- Collection libraries which implement data structures such as List (computing), associative array, tree structure and Set (computer science)
- XML Processing (Parsing, Transforming, Validating) libraries
- Security
- i18n libraries
- The integration libraries, which allow the application writer to communicate with external systems. These libraries include:
- The Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) Application Programming Interface for database access
- Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) for lookup and discovery
- Java remote method invocation and CORBA for distributed application development
- User Interface libraries, which include:
- The (heavyweight, or native mode) Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT), which provides graphical user interface components, the means for laying out those components and the means for handling events from those components
- The (lightweight) Swing (Java) libraries, which are built on AWT but provide (non-native) implementations of the AWT widgetry
- APIs for audio capture, processing, and playback
- A platform dependent implementation of Java virtual machine (JVM) which is the means by which the byte codes of the Java libraries and third party applications are executed
- Plugins, which enable Java applets to be run in Web browsers
- Java Web Start, which allows Java applications to be efficiently distributed to end users across the Internet
- Licensing and documentation
APIs
Sun has defined three platforms targeting different application environments and segmented many of its application programming interfaces so that they belong to one of the platforms. The platforms are:
- Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) — targeting environments with limited resources,
- Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) — targeting workstation environments, and
- Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) — targeting large distributed enterprise or Internet environments.
The Class (computer science) in the Java APIs are organized into separate groups called Java package. Each package contains a set of related Interface (Java)s, classes and
exception handling. Refer to the separate platforms for a description of the packages available.
The set of APIs is controlled by Sun Microsystems in cooperation with others through the Java Community Process program. Companies or individuals participating in this process can influence the design and development of the APIs. This process has been a subject of controversy.
See also
Notes
References
- Jon Byous, Java technology: The early years. Sun Developer Network, no date 1998. Retrieved April 22, 2005.
- James Gosling, A brief history of the Green project. Java.net, no date Q1/1998. Retrieved April 29, 2007.
- James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy L. Steele, Jr., and Gilad Bracha, The Java language specification, third edition. Addison-Wesley, 2005. ISBN 0-321-24678-0 (see also online edition of the specification.
- Tim Lindholm and Frank Yellin. The Java Virtual Machine specification, second edition. Addison-Wesley, 1999. ISBN 0-201-43294-3 (see also online edition of the specification).
External links
- Java home page
- Java for developers
- Java tutorials from Sun
-
- A Brief History of the Green Project
- Java: The Inside Story
- Java Was Strongly Influenced by Objective-C
- The Java Saga
- A history of Java
- The Long Strange Trip to Java
- Java Language Specification (pdf)
Java Programming Language (SL-275-SE6)
The Java Programming Language course provides students with information about the syntax of theJava programming language; object-oriented programming with the Java programming ...
Java Technology
Java Technology ... Java Everywhere Check out the facts, figures, communities and customers using Java, one of the most pervasive technologies on the planet.
Java (programming language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Java is a programming language originally developed by Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform.
The Java Programming Language Third Edition
Direct from the creators of the Java TM The Java TM Programming Language is an indispensible resource for novice and advanced programmers alike. Developers around the world have ...
Trail: Learning the Java Language (The Java™ Tutorials)
This trail covers the fundamentals of programming in the Java programming language. Object-Oriented Programming Concepts teaches you the core concepts behind object-oriented ...
Amazon.co.uk: The Java Programming Language (Java): Ken Arnold, James ...
Amazon.co.uk: The Java Programming Language (Java): Ken Arnold, James Gosling, David Holmes: Books ...
Amazon.co.uk: The Java Programming Language (Java): Ken Arnold, James ...
Amazon.co.uk: The Java Programming Language (Java): Ken Arnold, James Gosling: Books ... This item is not eligible for Amazon Prime, but millions of other items are.
Programming Language Processors in Java
Programming Language Processors in Java Compilers and Interpreters David A Watt University of Glasgow, Scotland and Deryck F Brown The Robert Gordon University, Scotland
Dictionary of Computers - Java (programming language)
Skip to page content | Tiscali Quicklinks. Please visit our Accessibility Page for a list of the Access Keys you can use to find your way around the site, skip directly to the main ...
Pearson Education - Java™ Programming Language, The
Java™ Programming Language, The, Ken Arnold, James Gosling, David Holmes ... Description Back Cover Contents Features Author . Description. Direct from the creators of the Java ...