JDK1.3.1 and JDK1.4.2

[kirthiga.narayanan]

Hi,
I heard that SUN will not support JDK1.3.1 come this April End..I
have a J2EE application and currently it is running on JDk1.3.1, How do
I find if it is compatible with JDK1.4.2
What are the differences between these two versions. Any help would be
highly appreciated.
Thanks
Kirthi

 

[Daniel Dyer]

AFAIK, nothing was done that would prevent a program that runs under
JDK 1.3 from continuing to run under JDK 1.4. Just a bunch of nice new
functions to use.

1.4 introduced the new 'assert' keyword, so if there is any source code
that uses 'assert' as an identifier it will no longer compile.

Dan.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Hi,
I heard that SUN will not support JDK1.3.1 come this April End..I
have a J2EE application and currently it is running on JDk1.3.1, How do
I find if it is compatible with JDK1.4.2
What are the differences between these two versions. Any help would be
highly appreciated.

Quite a few things changed. Regular Expression support was added, both
to the String class and to separate RE classes. StreamTokenizer was
deprecated in favor of the new split method of the String class.

AFAIK, nothing was done that would prevent a program that runs under
JDK 1.3 from continuing to run under JDK 1.4. Just a bunch of nice new
functions to use.

 

[Bjorn Abelli]

I heard that SUN will not support JDK1.3.1 come this April End..

It has already reached the "End of Life"...

http://java.sun.com/products/archive/j2se-eol.html

....as has all versions up to 1.4.1.

That by itself doesn't mean you can't continue using 1.3.1. On the contrary,
it's still avalable for download from Sun.

I have a J2EE application and currently it is running on JDk1.3.1,
How do I find if it is compatible with JDK1.4.2

The easiest way should be to install 1.4.2 (or even better, 1.5.0.06...) and
run your application. If it's compatible, you'll know...

On the other hand, as you say you use it for J2EE applications, why not
upgrade that as well. Most likely you have an old J2EE as well...

On the third hand, as you say you use it for J2EE applications, my guess is
that you have a third party container of some kind (Resin, JBoss, Tomcat,
whatever). What does *that* documentation say on compatibility issues
between JDK's?

What are the differences between these two versions.

You can track almost all changes backward on the java.sun.com-site:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/compatibility.html (from 1.4.2 -> 1.5)
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/compatibility.html (1.4.1 -> 1.4.2)
http://java.sun.com/products/archive/j2se/1.4.1_07/changes.html (1.4.0 ->
1.4.1)
etc...

Roedy also has a shortlist of differences:

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jdk.html#DIFFERENCES

However, as you say you use it for J2EE applications, there *might* be some
incompatibility problems if your application relies in any way on RMI (as
J2EE-applications tend to do). I have experienced such problems when parts
of the application was compiled with an older JDK. It *should* work if you
do a total recompilation of everything associated with your application, it
did for me, but I can't guarantee it...

// Bjorn A