Sun announced today the Beta 2 release of the J2SE 5.0 software development kit (JDK)

         Sun announced today the Beta 2 release of the J2SE 5.0 software development kit (JDK), which includes tools such as compilers and debuggers necessary for developing applets and applications and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). It is available for download at http://java.sun.com/j2se . In addition, Sun announced that Java Specification Request (JSR) 176 has reached final draft through the Java Community Process (JCP) . J2SE 5.0 is based upon JSR 176.

Sun also announced today benchmark results that underscore the J2SE 5.0 software's unprecedented scalability. Sun achieved record results for the SPECjbb 2000 benchmark (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation Java Business Benchmark 20001) with JDK 5.0 running on a 2.4GHz Sun Fire V20z server, based on AMD64 Opteron processors. The configuration delivers 59,648 JBB operations per second on the SPECjbb 2000 on a 64-bit two-way system, beating the best previously announced 64-bit two-way system results by 9 percent. Furthermore, the tests indicate Sun has the capacity to support more warehouses than any other two-way system, having demonstrated the ability to support 80 warehouses. This is 10 times the amount typically run on a two-way system.

Java 2 Platform Standard Edition Technology

With more than 100 new features, J2SE 5.0 technology enables developers to be more productive, allows system administrators to monitor and manage applications more effectively and delivers a richer experience for end users on desktop PCs.

Language updates in the new version allow developers to be more efficient and more productive by reducing the amount of repetitive boilerplate code that needs to be written. New features include generics, enumerated types, metadata and autoboxing. Performance improvements integral to the new release include reduced startup time, a smaller memory footprint and auto-tuning to deliver optimized performance on various computer systems right out-of-the-box.

Monitoring and manageability is a key theme of the release and the platform features a new monitoring and management API. This enables tools to monitor the health of a running JVM remotely or for applications to perform self monitoring for higher levels of reliability, availability and serviceability. Also new in the J2SE 5.0 platform is the Java Management Extensions (JMX) technology, which provides a simple, standard way of managing Java resources such as applications, devices and services.

Many areas of the rich desktop client have been enhanced including an updated, more modern, cross-platform look and feel. Support for advanced graphics hardware acceleration via Sun OpenGL(r) enables higher levels of Java 2D API performance. A new Pack200 utility dramatically reduces the download size of applets and applications for faster access. Many areas of user security have been modified for simplicity and safety.

Sun also discussed topics under consideration in the JSR that will guide the next platform release. These include increasingly sophisticated support for XML and Web services and enhanced monitoring and management features, building on J2SE 5.0 features. The team also is evaluating features to simplify enterprise desktop development and deployment.

Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition Technology

Leveraging the new Java 2 Platform Standard Edition technology, Sun today also previewed the upcoming Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 5.0 technology. The J2EE platform is the cornerstone of the lucrative Java Web services market and key enabler for service-oriented architectures. The J2EE 5.0 software, which is currently under discussion in JCP expert groups, focuses on the common theme of ease of development by leveraging the new language features in J2SE 5.0.

The use of annotations as defined in JSR 175 allows the developer to write components such as Enterprise JavaBeans more easily. The J2EE 5.0 specification (JSR 244) will also simplify common development scenarios. In addition, the specification plans to introduce a unified scripting model for the Web-tier. It also is expected to build on the already strong support of Web services with new releases of Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) and Java API for XML-based RPC (JAX-RPC) APIs.

Some technologies planned for inclusion with J2EE 5.0 such as JavaServer Faces technology and Java Standard Tag Libraries (JSTL) technology can be previewed now as part of the J2EE 1.4 SDK. The J2EE SDK is available now, free for development and deployment in production at http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/download.html