Java Version History - J2SE 1.4 (February 6, 2002)

J2SE 1.4 (February 6, 2002)

Codename Merlin. This was the first release of the Java platform developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 59. Major changes included:

Language changes
  • assert keyword (Specified in JSR 41.)
Library improvements
  • regular expressions modeled after Perl regular expressions
  • exception chaining allows an exception to encapsulate original lower-level exception
  • Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support
  • non-blocking IO (named NIO) (New Input/Output) (Specified in JSR 51.)
  • logging API (Specified in JSR 47.)
  • image I/O API for reading and writing images in formats like JPEG and PNG
  • integrated XML parser and XSLT processor (JAXP) (Specified in JSR 5 and JSR 63.)
  • integrated security and cryptography extensions (JCE, JSSE, JAAS)
  • Java Web Start included (Java Web Start was first released in March, 2001 for J2SE 1.3) (Specified in JSR 56.)
  • Preferences API (java.util.prefs)

Support and security updates for Java 1.4 ended in October 2008.

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