Java Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 1
■ ■ ■
Introduction
W
elcome to
The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam with J2SE 5, Second Edition
. By taking
advantage of the new features of J2SE 5, passing the Sun Certified Java Developer (SCJD) exam
is easier than ever before. Features such as generics, the enhanced for loop, autoboxing and
unboxing of primitives, the new concurrency classes, and other new capabilities offer devel-
opers a richer and more robust tool set than ever before. This topic and the accompanying
sample project will help you acquire the understanding necessary to pass the SCJD examina-
tion while learning the finer points of the J2SE Development Kit ( JDK 5). If you have been
meaning to take the SCJD exam or you are ready to further explore the mysteries of Java, you
have found the right topic.
The best way to learn a new skill is to use it. This is true in tennis, pottery, and yes, pro-
gramming. With that principle firmly in mind, this topic helps you learn about J2SE 5 while
detailing the strategies, skills, and information needed to pass the SCJD exam. Sun Microsys-
tems designed the SCJD exam to be a realistic example of what a professional Java developer
can expect to encounter in the real world. The SCJD exam covers a large portion of J2SE,
including Remote Method Invocation (RMI), threading, file input/output (I/O), and Swing.
The sample project, Denny's DVDs (introduced in Chapter 3), is designed to explore the
same concepts that the SCJD exam does. Unlike on the SCJD exam, however, the underlying
concepts are explained in detail. When you have finished this topic, you will have learned the
skills necessary to take and pass Sun's exam.
The two major topics discussed in this chapter are
•
Finding out how to download and take the SCJD exam
•
Understanding the goals of this topic
J2SE 5
J2SE 5 is a major update, designed to improve ease of development, increase scalability, pro-
vide for additional monitoring and manageability, and enhance the Java desktop clients. While
J2SE 5 offers a slew of new and exciting features, this topic focuses on bread-and-butter topics
such as threading, RMI, Swing, sockets, exception chaining, logging, and serialization. Once
you understand the foundations, everything else follows naturally.
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