Fortunately, the only one of these that you need to know for the
SCJP exam is transient.
A transient field is not serialized when, for example, an object is written to an ObjectOutputStream via the writeObject() method. Much much more on this in Chapter 9 of the 5.0 rev of "Complete
Java Certification StudyGuide".
A volatile field has subtly different behavior from a non-volatile field in a multi-threaded environment. The exact behavior is WAY beyond our scope here.
The strictfp keyword takes care of an embarrassing situation. In certain really extreme numeric operation situations, the JVM produces results that aren't exactly what the IEEE floating point spec calls for. A strictfp method uses the "strict" IEEE algorithms, and always generates IEEE-compliant results. Similarly, when a strictfp variable appears as an operand in a floatinf-point operation, the IEEE algorithm is used.
A native method looks like an abstract method. After the declaration, where you would expect to see a method body, there's just a semicolon. A call to the method is delegated to a dynamic library on the local machine. As you'd expect, there's a certain amount of work that you need to do to glue the Java code to the native library. Native methods are how a Java program can interact with the mouse, keyboard, and other hardware resources of the underlying hardware.
