Java 6 has been released. woot. http://java.sun.com/javase/6/
The highlights are: Built-in web services. You just add an annotation to a method and it becomes a SOAP-based web service. Yes, this is a direct rip-off from .NET. Scripting/dynamic language support. The stock JDK comes with JavaScript, but you can download Jython, JRuby, Groovy, BeanShell, Sleep (perl-ish), BSF, Tcl/Java, JBasic, JScheme and many others. These implementations existed before, but now Java has a standard API for using scripting languages, so you'll see Tomcat, JBoss, and other servers supporting scripting in a generic way so you can choose what language you want to use. The JDK has a built-in pure-java database. I'm not sure if it is ACID complaint, but I think it is. It is based on Apache Derby (which used to be IBM Cloudscape). Note, the JRE doesn't have this bloat. Improved Java2D and Swing performance. Java2D (and thus Swing) is now accelerated on your graphics card hardware. Put your GPU to work :-). -Bryan /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
