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Sun Microsystems released the first major language update to Java since 1995. Today they released J2SE 5.0.
This is the first serious release in nine years. It contains about about 100 major updates and lots of minor ones. According to Sun, there were six primary themes that they focused on in this release:
| 1st: Quality Quality is the first priority and theme. |
| 2nd : Performance and Scalability One Java VM can handle 500 gb of memory. One Java VM can handle 100 processors |
| 3rd: Monitoring and Management J2SE provides the ability to look at running systems, learn about state of the systems, and to change settings. |
| 4th: The Desktop Client. There is continued support for consumer applets and large java desktop applications. They are also upgrading the look and feel to provide better fidelity for those that are integrating into Gnome desktop or Windows. |
| 5th: Ease of Development. This version should help Java developers be more productive. A variety of Java languages changes have been added while trying to maintain power and simplicity. |
| 6th: Support for XML Built in support for XML including a new transformation XML engine and more. |
What is next? “Mustang” is the code name for J2SE 6.0, which is targeted for spring of 2006. This date is based on when Sun they believe the community wants an update, not based on engineering requirements for the release. Mustang will continue with themes similar to J2SE 5.0 such as quality, XML, Web Services, Java on the desktop, large systems performance and more.
But Mustang is the future. Tiger is here today. As Sun stated stated today regarding the use of J2SE 5.0, “Go for it. It’s Ready!“
