Top 10 New Things You Need to Know About Java 6

Sun Microsystems' Danny Coward and Mark Reinhold have published the top 10 things you need to know in Java SE 6 beta 2, as well as a list of approved and co-bundled features, including the bundling of Java DB (Apache Derby) into the JDK.

Below is a slightly condensed excerpt of the 10 things to know:

1. Web Services. First-class support for writing XML web service client applications. You can expose your APIs as .NET interoperable web services with a simple annotation. Mustang adds new parsing and XML to Java object-mapping APIs, previously only available in Java EE platform implementations or the Java Web Services Pack.
2. Scripting. You can now mix in JavaScript technology with your Java technology source code, useful for prototyping. Your own scripting engines can be plugged in.
3. Database. Mustang will co-bundle Java DB (Apache Derby). JDBC 4.0 adds many feature additions like special support for XML as an SQL datatype and better integration of Binary Large OBjects (BLOBs) and Character Large OBjects (CLOBs) into the APIs.
4. More Desktop APIs. GUI developers get a large number of new tricks to play like the ever popular yet newly incorporated SwingWorker utility to help you with threading in GUI apps, JTable sorting and filtering, and a new facility for quick splash screens to quiet impatient users.
5. Monitoring and Management. Mustang adds yet more diagnostic information, and we co-bundled the infamous memory-heap analysis tool Jhat for forensic explorations of those core dumps.
6. Compiler Access. The compiler API opens up programmatic access to javac for in-process compilation of dynamically generated Java code.
7. Pluggable Annotation. Java tool and framework vendors can define their own annotations and have core support for plugging in and executing the processors for custom annotations.
8. Desktop Deployment. Better platform look-and-feel in Swing technology, LCD text rendering, and snappier GUI performance overall. Java applications can integrate better with the native platform with things like new access to the platform's System Tray and Start menu. Mustang unifies the Java Plug-in technology and Java WebStart engines.
9. Security. XML-Digital Signature (XML-DSIG) APIs for creating and manipulating digital signatures); new ways to access platform-native security services, such as native Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and cryptographic services on Microsoft Windows for secure authentication and communication, Java Generic Security Services (Java GSS) and Kerberos services for authentication, and access to LDAP servers for authenticating users.
10. The -ilities: Quality, Compatibility, Stability. 80,000 test cases and several million lines of code testing conformance (being just one aspect of our testing activity). Snapshots of Mustang have been downloaded for the last 15 (not just 6) months. Bugs are fixed at each step. Performance is looking better than J2SE 5.

See also the Java SE 6 Highlights and Download page.