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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Clark S. Lindsey ,
Johnny S. Tolliver  and
Thomas Lindblad
Clark S. Lindsey
Affiliation:
Space-H Services, Maryland
Johnny S. Tolliver
Affiliation:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee
Thomas Lindblad
Affiliation:
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
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Summary

What is Java?

The term Java refers to more than just a computer language like C or Pascal. Java encompasses several distinct components:

  • A high-level language – Java is an object-oriented language whose source code at a glance looks very similar to C and C++ but is unique in many ways.

  • Java bytecode – A compiler transforms the Java language source code to files of binary instructions and data called bytecode that run in the Java Virtual Machine.

  • Java Virtual Machine (JVM) – A JVM program takes bytecode as input and interprets the instructions just as if it were a physical processor executing machine code. (We discuss actual hardware implementations of the Java interpreter in Chapter 24.)

Sun Microsystems owns the Java trademark (see the next section on the history of Java) and provides a set of programming tools and class libraries in bundles called Java Software Development Kits (SDKs). The tools include javac, which compiles Java source code into bytecode, and java, the executable program that creates a JVM that executes the bytecode. Sun provides SDKs for Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Other vendors provide SDKs for their own platforms (IBM AIX and Apple Mac OS X, for example). Sun also provides a runtime bundle with just the JVM and a few tools for users who want to run Java programs on their machines but have no intention of creating Java programs. This runtime bundle is called the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

Type
Chapter
Information
JavaTech, an Introduction to Scientific and Technical Computing with Java , pp. 3 - 28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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References

James Gosling, Java Technology and the Mission to Mars, Sun News, January 16, 2004, www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/mars.html
Maestro and the Mars rover data sets are available at http://mars.telascience.org
SensorNet Project, www.sensornet.gov
Aviation Digital Data Service, http://adds.aviationweather.gov/java/
AirportMonitor™, www.passur.com/am_airport.htm
Infrasound viewer, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Umeå, Sweden, www.umea.irf.se/ilfil/
BioJava, www.biojava.org
Steve Meloan, BioJava – Java Technology Powers Toolkit for Deciphering Genomic Codes, Sun Developer Network, June 2004, http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javaopensource/biojava/
Brett McLaughlin and David Flanagan, Java 1.5 Tiger, A Developer's Notebook, O'Reilly, 2004
David Flanagan, Java in a Nutshell, 4th edn, O'Reilly, 2002. (Note: we expect that the 5th edition, covering J2SE 5.0, will be published by the time you read this.)
Calvin Austin, J2SE 1.5 in a Nutshell, May 2004, http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/releases/j2se15/
Judith Bishop and Nigel Bishop, Java Gently for Scientists and Engineers, Addison-Wesley, 2000
Stephen J. Chapman, Java for Engineers and Scientists, Prentice-Hall, 2000
Richard Davies, Java for Scientists and Engineers, Addison-Wesley, 1999
Ronald Mak, Java Number Cruncher: the Java Programmer's Guide to Numerical Computing, Prentice-Hall, 2003
Grant Palmer, Technical Java: Applications for Science and Engineering, Prentice-Hall, 2003
Java Community Process Program – www.jcp.com
Java resources at IBM Developerworks, www.ibm.com/developerworks/java
Java software development on the Apple Mac, http://developer.apple.com/java/
Java at Sun Microsystems, Inc., http://java.sun.com
Java 2 Standard Edition API Specification, http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/
The Java Tutorial at Sun Microsystems, http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/

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