SAN FRANCISCO (09/03/2008) - An impending update to Java might sound like just an incremental release, based on its cumbersome naming: Java Platform Standard Edition 6 update 10 (Java SE 6u10). But the upgrade features technology considered critical to reviving the concept of client-side Java applets. |
Since early 2007, Alex Miller has been diligently tracking and sharing information about the JSRs proposed for inclusion in Java SE 7. In this Year in Review feature, he shares the fruits of his labor: a plausible picture of the forthcoming platform specification, including some of the most recent announcements from Sun Microsystems. Get an overview of the key improvements we're likely to see in Java SE 7, and find out which promising JSRs might not make it in after all. |
I sat in my office thumbing through the file drawer labeled "dead languages." I'd been debating for the better part of an hour whether or not to toss the Java desktop folder into the drawer with the others when the door burst open. A fat character dressed in white up to his red nose nodded his black and pointy head at me. He quickly saw what I was doing and grabbed the folder out of my hands. |
XML Signature technology, specified in the W3C recommendation XML-Signature Syntax and Processing, is at the foundation for solutions of message-level security in SOA. The universally adopted OASIS standard WS-Security is built upon this technology (and XML encryption). JSR-105 standardizes XML Signature technology for the Java platform, and will be part of the forthcoming Java SE 6 release. This article provides an introduction to JSR-105 based on the release candidate version of SE 6. |
Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE, formerly known as J2SE) provides a complete environment for applications development on desktops and servers. It also serves as the foundation for the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE, formerly known as J2EE) and Java Web Services. For articles about J2SE 5.0 and earlier versions, see the J2SE articles index page. |
Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE, formerly known as J2SE) version 6, provides a solution that allows the application to show the splash screen much earlier, even before the virtual machine starts. Now, a Java application launcher is able to decode an image and display it in a simple nondecorated window (see Figure 1). |
The founders of FareCompare, who have tried out virtually every new feature of the Java platform since Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 1.2 (J2SE 1.2), report several improvements as a result of their early access to Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6): |
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This article is a short course in monitoring and managing Java SE 6 applications. It first describes common problems and their symptoms in a Java SE application. Second, it gives an overview of Java SE 6's monitoring and management capabilities. Third, it describes how to use various Java Development Kit (JDK) tools to diagnose these problems. |
With the release of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5.0 (J2SE 5.0), also known as Tiger, and the coming Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) final release scheduled for early December 2006, not to mention the open sourcing of Java SE, the Java platform is evolving from a community development model to a free open source model. To get up-to-date, we met with Jean Elliott, director of product marketing for the Java SE platform at Sun Microsystems. Elliott has held a variety of leadership roles in product marketing, business planning, and strategic analysis during her nine years with Sun's Java platform team. Today, she manages the groups responsible for developer tools, Sun Developer Network, five generations of the core Java platform, Java community development practices, as well as the emerging Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ) and EmbeddedJava businesses. |
The latest beta release of the Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) now lets you access the system tray in Java with the help of two separate classes in the java.awt package: SystemTray and TrayIcon. These classes give you the ability to add graphics, popup menus, and floating tip functionality to the system tray. If approved by the JSR 270 Expert Group through the Java Community Process, you can expect to find this feature in the final version. |
Lee first defined troubleshooting as "locating the source of the problem and engaging in a postmortem analysis of what caused it." He pointed to many troubleshooting improvements in Java SE 6 that Sun developer Mandy Chung described in her blog. |
The primary difference between this design and the more traditional version of MVC is that the notifications of state changes in model objects are communicated to the view through the controller. Hence, the controller mediates the flow of data between model and view objects in both directions. View objects, as always, use the controller to translate user actions into property updates on the model. In addition, changes in model state are communicated to view objects through an application's controller objects. |
One important strength of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) has always been its internationalization and localization support. The platform continues to evolve, and Java SE 6 provides developers even more control over how they access and use locale-sensitive resources in their applications. Java SE 6 provides the following major enhancements to its internationalization support: |
But Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE, formerly known as J2SE) version 6, has resolved this issue and several others with a new Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) modality model. This new model allows the developer to scope, or limit, a dialog box's modality blocking, based on the modality type that the developer chooses. By doing so, the modality type also allows windows and dialog boxes to be truly parentless, that is, to have a null parent, which helps to limit the scope of the windows' and dialog boxes' modality. |
Don't be fooled by its unassuming name: Java SE 6 update 10 is a very different animal than the updates that preceded it. Java SE 6u10 pushes the envelope by adding more new features and functionality than in any previous Java programming language update release, including many that have been a long time coming. |
If the JSR 270 Expert Group approves these features through the Java Community Process program, you can expect to find them in the final release of Java SE 6. |
This article explains how to use the headless mode capabilities of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE, formerly referred to as J2SE). |
One common mistake of desktop application programmers is misusing the Swing event dispatch thread (EDT). They either unknowingly access user interface (UI) components from non-UI threads or simply disregard the consequences. The result is that applications become unresponsive or sluggish because they perform long-running tasks on the EDT instead of on separate worker threads. Long-running computations or input/output (I/O) bound tasks should never run on the Swing EDT. Finding problematic code may not always be simple, but the Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) makes it easier to fix such code by providing the javax.swing.SwingWorker class. |
To get an update on Java SE 6 monitoring enhancements, along with Sun's service offerings, we spoke with Sun Distinguished Engineer Vasanthan Dasan, who serves as chief technologist for the Services Product Unit, which creates service products and manages $5 billion in service revenue. Dasan is responsible for the architecture of mission-critical services around Sun's systems, storage, and software products. He also provides technical direction to global services sales and delivery. |
The weekly snapshots on jdk6.dev.java.net include complete binaries, complete javadoc, and complete source. That includes all the Java library code, the associated native code, and the complete HotSpot JVM source code. So if you are interested in J2SE internals, it is all there to see, as the release develops. |
Version 6 of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), was released for general availability in December 2006. So here are the top 10 things you need to know about the release, if you're still hovering hesitantly over that Download Page link. Subsequent articles will provide more in-depth information. |
The Java 6 platform delivers several enhancements in VM instrumentation, management APIs, and JDK tools to help you efficiently identify and diagnose performance and memory problems within Java applications. This article describes the improvements made to the Java SE monitoring and managing framework and touches on the diagnostic command-line utilities available to developers. |
Mustang is galloping into town. Also known as Java SE 6, Sun’s latest incarnation of the Java 2 platform should arrive in its first non-beta release by the time you read this article. The many new features (from console I/O and access permissions control methods, to the system tray API and table sorting and filtering) that we now get to play with make Mustang an especially interesting release. |