As the title implies, this volume of The Java Tutorial starts where the first ended. The first book covers API present in the Java platform's first release.
This book covers API subsequently added to the Java platform.
This book is a collection of tutorials written by Java team members. Each author who contributed to this book is an authority in his or her area of the Java platform. Some authors are even the creators of the API they describe.
The hyperlinked origins of this book will be evident as you read it. For instance, underlined phrases throughout this book mimic online links. A link to material within this book is followed by the appropriate page number. A link to material outisde this book, such as to the JDK API documentation, is accompanied by a footnote that contains a URL. Other evidence of this book's online origin can be found on the first page of each trail/lesson, which provides the URL where the trail/lesson can be found in the online tutorial.
You might be wondering why we use the terms "trails" and "lessons." We know that people don't learn linearly. People learn by posing a problem, solving it, uncovering other problems, solving them, and learning information as the need arises. Our original vision for the online tutorial was to encourage and enable this type of thinking and learning. We envisioned a mountain of ski trails, where at any junction, a reader could choose the most interesting or appropriate path at that time. But we also needed some sort of structure and organization, so we created a two-tier hierarchy; trails at the top level and lessons within them. We also use a high level of linking to help you pick and choose where you go and when.
What You Need
This book documents the Java Development Kit TM (JDK) 1.2 release of the Java platform. To compile and run the examples in this book you need a development environment that is compatible with JDK 1.2. You can use a commercially available development environment or the JDK itself. We've included JDK 1.2 on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book.The Java Plug-in ensures that your browser uses the latest Java Runtime Environment compatible with JDK 1.2.
Finally, you need an editor that can save files in ASCII format with a .java extension. Also, the editor must allow you to specify both uppercase and lowercase letters in the filename.
About the Authors
Find out more about the authors who contributed to this book.
Deborah Adair, author of Working with Java 2D Graphics and Java Sound
Deborah Adair, the technical writer for the Java Media group at Sun Microsystems, specializes in designing and writing documentation for software developers and other highly technical readers. She has a degree in Scientific and Technical Communication from the University of Washington and has been writing for the computer industry for the past nine years.
Cindy Bloch, author of Servlets
Cynthia Bloch writes technical documentation at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division. She has a Master's in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Since graduate school she has worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Carnegie Group Incorporated in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and as a Senior Technical Trainer at Transarc Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Joshua Bloch, author of Collections
Joshua Bloch is a Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems' Java Software division, where he works as an architect in the Java Language Group. His major contributions include the Collections Framework and java.math.
In a former life, Josh was a Senior Systems Designer at Transarc Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he designed and implemented many parts of the Encina distributed transaction processing system. In the deep dark past, he held summer positions at the usual corporate research labs (Bell Labs and IBM Research).
Josh holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University, where he wrote a long, boring dissertation on replication, and designed and implemented the language layer of the Camelot distributed transaction processing system. He holds a B.S. in computer science from Columbia.
Mary Dageforde, author of Security
Mary Dageforde writes software documentation for various Silicon Valley computer companies, including Sun Microsystems. She has a Master's in Computer Science from Stanford University. She spent ten years working primarily on the design and implementation of the English-like customer programming language for the pioneering Xerox Star GUI environment and its successors. For the past eight years she has concentrated on documenting APIs, languages, tools, and systems.
Maydene Fisher, author of JDBC Database Access
Maydene Fisher has extensive experience as a technical writer specializing in the documentation of object-oriented programming languages. Fisher began her technical writing career on Wall Street, where she documented complex computer models, written in C++, for simulating fixed income derivatives. Before joining the JDBC team at Sun's Java Software division, she wrote documentation for ScriptX, an object-oriented multimedia scripting language, at Kaleida Labs and at Apple Computer. Dale Green Author of Internationalization and The Reflection API
Dale Green is a staff writer with Sun Microsystems, where he documents APIs for the Java programming language. In previous lives he programmed business applications, designed databases, taught technical classes, and documented RDBMS products. In his current incarnation he writes about internationalization and reflection APIs for the Java Tutorial.
Jim Inscore, author of Programming with Java IDL
Jim Inscore has worked as a technical writer for the past 18 years, documenting API for NeXT, Kaleida, Macromedia, Oracle, Objectivity, and a number of other companies. He is currently publications manager for enterprise, server, and multimedia technologies in Java Software.
In his spare time, Jim hangs out with his family and works on remodeling his house.
Monica Pawlan, author of Overview of JDK Features and Reference Objects
Monica Pawlan is a staff writer for the Java Developer Connection (JDC), and contributing author for the Java Tutorial. She has a background in 2D and 3D graphics, security, and database products, and loves to study and write about emerging technologies. When not writing, she spends her spare time gardening, studying classical piano, and dreaming of far away places--some of which she occasionally visits.
Andrew Quinn, author of JavaBeans: Java Platform Components
Andy Quinn is a Sun Microsystems technical writer who specializes in writing for software developers.
Alan Sommerer Author of The Java Archive (JAR) File Format and The Java Extension Mechanism
Before moving to Silicon Valley, Alan Sommerer was a physicist on the staff of the International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics at Iowa State University. After moving to California, he joined Warthman Associates in Palo Alto, where he did technical writing and applet programming for a variety of high- tech firms. Alan now writes documentation about the Java Development Kit for Sun Microsystems.
Beth Stearns, author of Using the Java Native Interface
Beth Stearns is the president of Computer Ease Publishing, a computer consulting firm she founded in 1982. Her client list includes Sun Microsystems Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc., Oracle Corporation, and Xerox Corporation, among others. Her Understanding EDT, a guide to Digital Equipment Corporation's text editor, has sold throughout the world. She received her B.S. degree from Cornell University and a Master's degree from Adelphi University.
Beth is an avid cyclist, hiker, gourmet cook, and Francophile, and she plans to retire with her two cats and husband to the southwest of France.
Jim Waldo, co-author of Using Java RMI
Jim Waldo is a Senior Staff Engineer with Sun Microsystems, where he leads a team developing a distributed programming infrastructure for Java. Before joining Sun's Java Software division, he was a Principle Investigator in Sun Labs, doing research into the areas of object-oriented programming and systems, distributed computing, and user environments. Jim is also on the faculty of Harvard University, where he teaches distributed computing in the department of computer science. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He also holds M.A. degrees in both linguistics and philosophy.
Ann Wollrath, co-author of Using Java RMI
Ann Wollrath is a senior staff engineer with Sun Microsystems where she is the architect and project lead of the Java Remote Method Invocation system. Previously during her tenure at Sun Microsystems Laboratories and at the MITRE Corporation, she researched reliable, largenscale distributed systems and parallel computation. Wollrath received an M.S. in computer science from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and a B.S. in computer science from Merrimack College.
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the authors who contr
![]({"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5143SPND0PL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[260,330],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5143SPND0PL._SX391_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg":[393,499]})
