JDK 7 Release

   

the official Java Development Kit (JDK) 7 release candidate. It's the first new version of Java in five years, and the first ever since Oracle took over Sun.

The first general release of Java 7 will be July 28.

Some Key Features

JSR 292: Support for dynamically-typed languages (InvokeDynamic)

Strict class-file checking

JSR 334: Small language enhancements (Project Coin)

Upgrade class-loader architecture

Method to close a URLClassLoader

Concurrency and collections updates (jsr166y)

Unicode 6.0

Locale enhancement

Separate user locale and user-interface locale

JSR 203: More new I/O APIs for the Java platform (NIO.2) (turorial on File I/O)

NIO.2 filesystem provider for zip/jar archives

SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol)

SDP (Sockets Direct Protocol)

Use the Windows Vista IPv6 stack

TLS 1.2

Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC)

JDBC 4.1

XRender pipeline for Java 2D

Create new platform APIs for 6u10 graphics features

Nimbus look-and-feel for Swing

Swing JLayer component

Update the XML stack

Enhanced JMX Agent and MBeans