Java Versions - Features & Enhancements

Java, the software platform developed by Oracle has undergone a series of modifications as well as improvements, since the development of JDK or Java Development Kit version 1.0. All these modifications have seen the addition/incorporation of new features and enhancement of the existing ones, with a view to provide value added service to the users. Let us discuss some of the features as well as enhancements that the platform has undergone over the last few years.

However, before we get into the features, let us run through different versions of Java that have seen the daylight over the years. The endeavor of the language started in the year 1996 with the introduction of Java 1.0. The first version was followed by version 1.1 in 1997 and 1.2 in 1998. The subsequent years saw the introduction of versions 1.3, and 1.4 in 2000 and 2002, respectively. Years 2004 and 2006 saw the introduction of versions 5 and 6 respectively, while version 7 was introduced in mid 2011 followed by the version 8 in mid late 2012.

Speaking about the new features or enhancements, let us start with Spring Framework 4.0 that was introduced in 2004. The platform has seen major modifications since then. For example, Spring 2.0 version came up with XML namespaces along with AspectJ support. On the other hand, Spring 2.5 version featured configuration that is mainly annotation-driven. Again, Spring 3.0 was rich in a solid J 5+ foundation across its framework codebase along with certain other features like @Configuration model, that is mainly based on Java.

When we say that a configuration is annotation-driven, it means that it is a typical type of annotation wherein a certain type of processing is used that provides all the meta-data or configuration information in the J based source file.

The next in the line was version 4.0 that provides a full support for version 8. Yet, this also allows the use of Spring with the older versions as well, though for that the user would need at least SE 6.

Again, when we come to version 4.0, we see that many classes as well as methods have been removed. On the other hand the Spring 4.0 Framework comes up with a number of features that are supported by the version 8. Still, Spring has retained its compatibility with the previous versions of Java application Development Kit and Java. The bottom line is that it is pretty difficult to describe all the features or the enhancements of the language versions. Yet, let us get into a synopsis of them. JDK version 1.1 came up with JDBC (Java Database Connectivity), inner classes, Java Beans, RMI (Remote Method Invocation), Reflection.

J2SE Version 1.2 has come up with Collections Framework, Just In Time (JIT) compiler, Java String memory map for constants, Jar Signer to sign Java ARchive (JAR) files, Java Foundation Classes (JFC) consisting of Swing 1.0, Drag and Drop, and J 2D class library, CLOB, sets of scrollable result, batch update, BLOB, user-defined types of JDBC, J Plug-ins, Applet Audio support.

JDK Version 1.1 comes up with J Database Connectivity, Java Beans, Reflection, Remote Method Invocation. J2SE Version 1.4 features XML Processing, J Web Start, J Print Service, Assertions, JDBC 3.0 API, Chained Exception, Logging API, Preferences API, Assertions, Image I/O API, Regular Expressions, IPv6 Support.

J SE 6 contains Scripting Language Support, J Compiler API, JDBC 4.0 API, Pluggable Annotations, Integrated Web Services, integrated Web Services. LDAP support, Java GSS, Kerberos, Native PKI.

J SE 7 features Automatic null Handling, Binary Literals, underscore in literals, Diamond Syntax, J nio Package, Dynamic Language Support, Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation, Handling of Multiple Exceptions, Strings in switch Statement.

J SE 8 features include TLS SNI, Parallel operations, Concurrent Accumulators, Type Annotations, Nashhorn JavaScript Engine, Default Methods, Type Annotations, Date and Time API, Lambda Expressions, Pipelines and Streams.

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