J2SE 1.3 versus J2SE 1.4

[James Brady]

Congratulations on the new book James. I suppose this is dealt with thoroughly in the book, but what is it about in J2SE 1.4 which most impressed you and would you encourage all developers to make the move 1.4 ? ie what are there compelling reasons to make the change ?
Thanks,
James.

[Michael Finney]

the assert statement?
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Michael Finney
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform
Sun Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform

[James Hart]

Originally posted by James Brady:
Congratulations on the new book James. I suppose this is dealt with thoroughly in the book, but what is it about in J2SE 1.4 which most impressed you and would you encourage all developers to make the move 1.4 ? ie what are there compelling reasons to make the change ?

James,
I think regular expressions, built in XML support, and web start are probably the three biggest things to draw you in to 1.4. Once you're there, you'll find the new I/O APIs, the assert statement, and logging and preferences are facilities you'll be able to make a lot of use of.
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James Hart
Wrox
Author of "Early Adopter J2SE 1.4"

[Stanley Tan]

For me, it's regular expressions and XML, and of course the assert statement. Hehe.
When will "const" become part of the language?

[Doug Wang]

Originally posted by James Brady:
Congratulations on the new book James. I suppose this is dealt with thoroughly in the book, but what is it about in J2SE 1.4 which most impressed you and would you encourage all developers to make the move 1.4 ? ie what are there compelling reasons to make the change ?

For me, XML support is expected as a matter of course, but regular expressions part really amazes me much.
Doug.

[Val Pecaoco]

Hi guys,
I really like the JAAS, JCE, and JSSE as standard packages in JDK 1.4. For me these three constitute the X-factor in "Merlin". And of course, yes! -- regular expressions! Something I've done in Perl and VBScript before but not in Java -- until now. But I think I'll just wait for the "Beta..." to be stricken off before I install and use it (Heck, there's a lot of "_HOME" variables and setings to change!)
BTW, I've read that Sun is specifically targeting M$'s .Net with the official release of 1.4, the reason why it's been "long-a-coming", maybe for last minute fortifications Any leakages?!
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5098585,00.html
Ex Animo Java!
-- Val

[James Brady]

Originally posted by James Hart:
James,
I think regular expressions, built in XML support, and web start are probably the three biggest things to draw you in to 1.4. Once you're there, you'll find the new I/O APIs, the assert statement, and logging and preferences are facilities you'll be able to make a lot of use of.

Thanks James.
Regarding web start, do you know if its possible to launch an application from the browser which will allow a network connection (as client or server) to hosts other than the web server which served the web page initially ? ie. are there security restrictions on socket connections in this regard ?
Appreciate it,
James.

[James Hart]

Originally posted by James Brady:
[B]Regarding web start, do you know if its possible to launch an application from the browser which will allow a network connection (as client or server) to hosts other than the web server which served the web page initially ? ie. are there security restrictions on socket connections in this regard ?
B]

JNLP applications run inside a sandbox much like an applet does, and are, by default, restricted from accessing servers other than the one they came from. But if you sign your JNLP application's JAR files, and request an open application environment, then if the client allows it your code is run outside the sandbox in an unrestricted environment.
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James Hart
Wrox
Author of "Early Adopter J2SE 1.4"

[Fei Ng]

web start sounds good! So, are they dropping applet??
Is web start a total replacement for applet?

[Doug Wang]

Originally posted by FEI NG:
web start sounds good! So, are they dropping applet??
Is web start a total replacement for applet?

Hi, FEI
I think so. Applet is over, and Web start is coming up. But what confuses me much is that Sun rarely mention applet in his documentation of Web Start.

Doug.

[James Brady]

Originally posted by James Hart:
JNLP applications run inside a sandbox much like an applet does, and are, by default, restricted from accessing servers other than the one they came from. But if you sign your JNLP application's JAR files, and request an open application environment, then if the client allows it your code is run outside the sandbox in an unrestricted environment.

You write well...
Another question - this time about New I/O - Ive been looking for a way to "snoop" ethernet packets (much like TCPDUMP or Sun's snoop does) - I can imagine Id need to use native code to access Hardware at that level but perhaps there is an API or something about this in the new I/O - have you any ideas on this ?

[James Brady]

Originally posted by James Hart:
JNLP applications run inside a sandbox much like an applet does, and are, by default, restricted from accessing servers other than the one they came from. But if you sign your JNLP application's JAR files, and request an open application environment, then if the client allows it your code is run outside the sandbox in an unrestricted environment.

As a follow on question to the previous one, do you know if its possible to listen into a TCP socket connection at a particular port ? Im trying to write a protocol analyzer (for TCP/IP based protocols) and would like to use Java. Ive searched for information on this kind of thing and havent had much luck so far.
Thanks.

[Joel Cochran]

The whole reason I switched to 1.4 was for the new I/O features. I was trying to write a program that would create and replace JPEGs from a Graphics2D object and I was really struggling with the JPEGEncoder package. In doing my research I found out about the new I/O enhancements to 1.4 and a half hour later had my program up and running. Quite slick!
I didn't even know about Web Start until I installed the new SDK, but after playing with it I am very impressed. We have been wanting to provide an ASP type solution to our clients based and it seems to me that Web Start has a lot of potential in this area. On that note, I'd like to ask James a question: for Web Start, could I use a DB on my server and have the user application run through Web Start on their machine?
Joel Cochran

[Junilu Lacar]

Originally posted by James Hart:
.. and logging and preferences are facilities you'll be able to make a lot of use of.

I haven't read up on developments in the logging area but I know there was a request from the folks who wrote the Log4J framework to use it instead of what was already on Sun's drawing board as the basis for any logging functionality added to the new version. How did that pan out?
Thanks,
Junilu

[Jason Kretzer]

I am not as Java savvy as some of you here so please forgive my ignorance but would someone help me with the concept of "regular expressions"? I think I understand but I want to be sure.

Thanks,

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Jason R. Kretzer
Software Engineer
http://alia.iwarp.com

[Jason Kretzer]

Also, I was wondering if anything concerning the java.util.jar/zip package was changed/enhanced.
Thanks,

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Jason R. Kretzer
Software Engineer
http://alia.iwarp.com

[Junilu Lacar]

Jason,
Check out this article in JavaWorld: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-2001/jw-0713-regex.html
Junilu

Originally posted by Jason Kretzer:
would someone help me with the concept of "regular expressions"? I think I understand but I want to be sure.

[Tom Ben]

Are there any changes to the jdbc package?
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Sun Certified Programmer on the Java 2 Platform

[Fei Ng]

Originally posted by Tom Ben:
Are there any changes to the jdbc package?

Tom, take a look JDBCTM 3.0 API . http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/guide/jdbc/index.html

[Stanley Tan]

All these new JDBC features are kind of useless if you're still stuck using Oracle's 1.1.1 drivers, huh?
Jason,
Regular expressions are basically pattern matching.