Java 1.4 has got lot of new features implemented and 60% of new classes and interfaces are implemented compared to the previous release.
Top Features implemented in Java 1.4 release are discussed in this post.
Parsing XML
javax.xml.parsers will provide the implementation.
java 1.4
SAX and DOM parsers are 2 types of approach to follow.
org.xml.sax
org.w3c.dom
Transforming XML
Transformation API provides functionality to transform XML
document to a different representation.
It also allows you to apply XSLT transformation to the document content in the XML.
JDBC 3.0 API
JDBC 3.0 API comprised of packages java.sql & javax.sql, provides universal data access from the Java programming language.
Using the JDBC 3.0 API, you can access virtually any data source from relational databases to spreadsheets and flat files.
JDBC technology also provides a common base on which tools and alternative interfaces can be built.
Logging
Java provides logging mechanism which is very much essential for server based/ web applications.
java.util.logging provides the logging mechanism.
Get the Logger object using static call “Logger.getLogger()” passing the name of the class or package name.
A variety of methods are provided based on the severity of the message to be logged. To name some of them : info, debug, severe.
Secure Sockets and HTTPS
One of Java’s greatest strengths, ever since Java 1.0, has been the ability to perform powerful networking with very little code. Java 1.4 adds support for secure sockets (using the SSL and TLS protocols) so that you can now easily write powerful and secure networking code. SSL support is provided by the javax.net.ssl package. (Note: javax not java.) As with all security-related packages in Java, this package is complex and highly configurable. Fortunately, however, the most common uses of SSL are quite easy to implement
Linked HashMap & HashSet
Comes out with the merging concept of HashMap and LinkedList.
Non Blocking I/O & File Channel
It is brand new equivalent of java.net.Socket.
If you are one among the guys used Socket and all that and worried a lot with the performance, here is the something for you which can deal very well with the high time network related communication issues.
With the advent of NIO, high performance is possible in read and write operations over a network connection.
java.nio package provides the implementation for this feature.
Apart from the features provided by our good old java.io File Channel also provides memory mapping and locking of files.
Regular Expressions
java.util.regex package provides the implementation for Regular Expressions feature.
This feature is very well used while dealing with a pattern of text say search mechanism.
Assertions
One amongst the best features is here : ASSERTIONS.
This feature is used to verify and validate the design assumptions
The full syntax of assertions as follows:
assert <assertion>;
or
assert <assertion> : <error code>;
In the true case this assertion simply does nothing and if assertion fails then java.lang.AssertionError is thrown.
comprehensive coverage of java 1.4 new features is available
http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/relnotes/features.html
Java 1.4.2 is a maintenance release and has got minor enhancements and changes.
Stay tuned….
