Java SE 6 (December 11, 2006)
Codename Mustang. As of this version, Sun replaced the name "J2SE" with Java SE and dropped the ".0" from the version number. Internal numbering for developers remains 1.6.0. This version was developed under JSR 270.
During the development phase, new builds including enhancements and bug fixes were released approximately weekly. Beta versions were released in February and June 2006, leading up to a final release that occurred on December 11, 2006.
Major changes included in this version:
- Support for older Win9x versions dropped. Unofficially Java 6 Update 7 is the last release of Java shown to work on these versions of Windows. This is believed to be due to the major changes in Update 10.
- Scripting Language Support (JSR 223): Generic API for tight integration with scripting languages, and built-in Mozilla JavaScript Rhino integration
- Dramatic performance improvements for the core platform, and Swing.
- Improved Web Service support through JAX-WS (JSR 224)
- JDBC 4.0 support (JSR 221).
- Java Compiler API (JSR 199): an API allowing a Java program to select and invoke a Java Compiler programmatically.
- Upgrade of JAXB to version 2.0: Including integration of a StAX parser.
- Support for pluggable annotations (JSR 269)
- Many GUI improvements, such as integration of SwingWorker in the API, table sorting and filtering, and true Swing double-buffering (eliminating the gray-area effect).
- JVM improvements include: synchronization and compiler performance optimizations, new algorithms and upgrades to existing garbage collection algorithms, and application start-up performance.
Java 6 reaches the end of its supported life in February 2013, at which time all updates, including security updates, will stop.
Read more about this topic: Java Version History