Java Versions, Features and History

A popular interview question in java is “what is new in Java version X?”. Is that an intelligent question is debatable. I have summarized below important new features added in each major java release till now. I target to highlight important features added in respective release. Apart from below list of features, every release has enhancements and lots of bug fixes.

Java Version SE 7

Code named Dolphin and released on July 28, 2011.

New features in Java SE 7

·         Strings in switch Statement

·         Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation

·         Multiple Exception Handlin
·         Support for Dynamic Languages
·         Try with Resources

·         Java nio Package
·         Binary Literals, underscore in literals
·         Diamond Syntax

·         Automatic null Handling

Java Version SE 6

Code named Mustang and released on December 11, 2006.

New features in Java SE 6

·         Scripting Language Support

·         JDBC 4.0 API

·         Java Compiler API

·         Pluggable Annotations

·         Native PKI, Java GSS, Kerberos and LDAP support.

·         Integrated Web Services.

·         Lot more enhancements.

J2SE Version 5.0
Code named Tiger and released on September 30, 2004.

New features in J2SE 5.0

·         Generics

·         Enhanced for Loop

·         Autoboxing/Unboxing

·         Typesafe Enums

·         Varargs

·         Static Import

·         Metadata (Annotations)

·         Instrumentation

J2SE Version 1.4

Code named Merlin and released on February 6, 2002 (first release under JCP).

New features in J2SE 1.4

·         XML Processing

·         Java Print Service

·         Logging API

·         Java Web Start

·         JDBC 3.0 API

·         Assertions

·         Preferences API
·         Chained Exception

·         IPv6 Support

·         Regular Expressions

·         Image I/O API

J2SE Version 1.3

Code named Kestrel and released on May 8, 2000.

New features in J2SE 1.3

·         Java Sound

·         Jar Indexing

·         A huge list of enhancements in almost all the java area.

J2SE Version 1.2

Code named Playground and released on December 8, 1998.

New features in J2SE 1.2

·         Collections framework.

·         Java String memory map for constants.

·         Just In Time (JIT) compiler.

·         Jar Signer for signing Java ARchive (JAR) files.

·         Policy Tool for granting access to system resources.

·         Java Foundation Classes (JFC) which consists of Swing 1.0, Drag and Drop, and Java 2D class libraries.

·         Java Plug-in

·         Scrollable result sets, BLOB, CLOB, batch update, user-defined types in JDBC.

·         Audio support in Applets.

JDK Version 1.1

Released on February 19, 1997

New features in JDK 1.1

·         JDBC (Java Database Connectivity)

·         Inner Classes

·         Java Beans

·         RMI (Remote Method Invocation)

·         Reflection (introspection only)

JDK Version 1.0

Codenamed Oak and released on January 23, 1996.