In JDK 1.1, no other new feature is likely to have more impact on Java programmers than the less-publicized inner classes feature. It'll change the way in which Java programs have been traditionally written. The primary goal of this feature is to provide the ability to declare classes ...

Java's support for concurrency is sufficient enough to achieve a wide range of desired results. While the primitives provided are very powerful, they can also be easily misused and may lead to unpredictable behavior. It is well known that in a multithreaded environment, due to the lac...

Last month, I introduced the terms types, variables, classes, objects and references. If you understood the examples and correctly answered the test question I provided at the end of the article, you're well on your way to mastering the essential concepts that govern how all Java progr...

The Internet has been very popular in the past few years. With its popularity still growing, increased demand for Internet network software has grown as well. One of the greatest advantages to developing Internet software with Java is in its robust networking support built into the cor...

What JavaPlan Delivers The Java language and Java applets have taken the Internet by storm, yielding interactivity on Web pages in ways previously never seen. To date, however, Java has not been applied to larger scale development problems, a result of a concentration of effort on Java...

The evolution of Java has been truly mind-boggling, and quite unlike anything we have ever seen before in the computing domain. Seldom does a day go by without yet another software vendor pledging allegiance to the Java paradigm. Today, few among us will question the power and flexibil...

Java is a programming language. Nothing complicated so far. And just like all other computer languages, it will not make a bad programmer into a good programmer. All the same techniques picked up while coding in, say, C or C++, generally can be applied to the same program in Java. But ...

Why Test Applets? Why do we test an applet? What are we trying to show when we test? This article is addressed to the developer/tester, someone who is testing their own Applets. Nonetheless, all but a very few of the observations and techniques apply to the problem of testing someone e...

"Variables have types, objects have classes." This phrase, borrowed from the Java Language Specification, succinctly answers several questions that, judging by the frequency of their appearance in the Java news groups, are a common source of confusion for many Java programmer...

The following excerpt is from "Inside Java WorkShop," by Lynn Weaver & Bob Jervis. Sun Microsystems Press/Prentice Hall PTR book. (ISBN 0-13-858234-3; $39.95US) Copyright Sun Microsystems Inc., 1997.

With the release of the Java 1.1 API, Java developers have even more tools to work with. Two important abilities that were added to the Java 1.1 API include the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) objects and objects to handle Serialization. JDBC provides developers with the means to con...

Almost every working professional has experienced the tedium and frustration that results from scheduling a meeting for multiple attendees with potentially conflicting schedules plus additional constraints imposed by the meeting rooms and other resources. This problem deserves serious ...

Introduction In the first article of this series, we compared how Java and C++ support various object-oriented concepts. In this second and final part, we cover other programming language concepts and examine differences in how the two languages support them. Each programming language ...

Welcome to Java Foundations! Java is purported, by its designers, to be a "simple" programming language. While reasonable arguments can be made that illustrate Java's simplicity in comparison to a language like C++, developers coming from languages such as the xBASE derivativ...

Ever since it was announced in May of 1996, Java Beans has been a topic of great interest among Java developers. The first generation Java technology embodied several modern software engineering concepts such as object-orientation, platform independence, multithreading, network awaren...

Introduction Much of the excitement about Java comes from C++ programmers looking for a better way to develop software. In this article we take an in-depth look at Java from the perspective of a C++ expert who wishes to quickly come up to speed and transfer hard-earned knowledge of C++...

Introduction Large-scale distributed applications and shells often require the execution of external modules. Because the modules are not known at compilation time, this execution must be dynamic. For example, upon entering a command at the UNIX prompt, the shell must find, load, and e...

Last month, we began looking at building data structures in Java. The idea for the article was inspired by the constant posts to comp.lang.java from people who were lost without pointers. The data structures which we introduced were useful, but were really more of a starting point for ...

Java applets can be used to provide better dynamic interaction with the user on Web pages than simple CGI scripts and html forms. However, like any programming language, the code does not spring forth perfect, but rather is designed, implemented, and then debugged.

But an equally compelling story can be told about the virtues of building the server-side of a web application in Java as well. This article will outline the major design issues of creating a server-side Java solution, and though I promise not to make this an infomercial, a number of e...

Introduction Scriptic is an experimental extension to the Java language. Why is this new language on top on another brand new one? What problems does it solve?

Java programs can be classified as either Java applications or Java applets, based on the modules' execution content. While applets require the presence of a Java-enabled browser (or an AppletViewer), applications are designed to run on the client machine on the top of the Java interpr...

A common occurrence on comp.lang. java is a post questioning the ability to create growable data structures in Java. The common belief tends to be that pointers are necessary to implement a growable data structure. This obviously stems from experience with languages like C or Pascal, w...

Introduction Computing in scientific and engineering areas often deals with manipulating numbers that represent physical entities, such as durations, weights, and forces. A common source of errors in scientific computing involves processing numbers that represent different kinds of ent...

Native methods are functions written in C or C++, compiled into a library, and dynamically loaded by the Java runtime. This article describes how Java programs can call native methods, and how native C code can create Java objects and invoke Java methods. The examples are written for W...

When Sun Microsystems introduced the Java language, professional software engineering and network programming was forever changed. Java's language-level support for platform-independent software development, multithreaded applications, true object-oriented program design, and dynamic c...

Preface Current difficulties in developing and maintaining software within limited budgets and challenging development-schedule constraints result in part from the shortcomings of existing programming languages and development environments. In the context of distributed programming for...