Java Versions, Features and History

Last modified on September 7th, 2014 by Joe.

This article gives you a highlight of important features added in every major Java release. Check this article to know about Java history, I am sure you will find it interesting.

Java SE 8

Java 8 was released on 18 March 2014. The code name culture is dropped with Java 8 and so no official code name going forward from Java 8.

New features in Java SE 8

Lambda Expressions

Pipelines and Streams

Date and Time API

Default Methods

Type Annotations

Nashhorn JavaScript Engine

Concurrent Accumulators

Parallel operations

PermGen Error Removed

TLS SNI

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 Handling

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.

Wishing you a happy new year!