When Java 1.0 was released, it included a set of eight packages, called the core API. These are the packages described in the preceding chapters and arc the ones that you-all will use most often in your day-to-day programming. Each subsequent release added to the core API. Today, the Java API contains a large number of packages. Many of the new packages support areas of specialization that are beyond the scope of this book. However, three packages warrant a brief examination here: Java. Lang. Reflect, Java. Rome, and Java.text. They support reflection, Remote Method Invocation (RMI), and text formatting Respectively.
Reflection is the ability of software to analyze it. It is an essential part of the Java Beans technology that is covered' in Chapter 25. Examples are provided here to introduce the concept. Remote Method Invocation (RMI) allows you to build Java applications that are distributed among several machines. This chapter provides a simple client/server example that uses RMI. Title text formatting capabilities of Java. Text have many uses. The one examined here formats "date and time strings.
The Core Java APL Package
Lists all of the Java Core API packages defined by Java 2 and summarizes their functions.