Introduction to Java Programming

Advantages of Java

• Platform independence
• Stand-alone applications and servlets

Structure of a Java program

• Compiling source code into bytecode
• Overview of class libraries

Object-Oriented Programming with Java

The object paradigm

• Object-oriented (OO) programming
• Encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism
• OO analysis and design: "Is a" and "Has a" relationships
• Designing an OO application step by step
• Diagramming object structure with Unified Modeling Language (UML)

Java's object-oriented features

• Instantiating objects from classes
• Aggregation and composition
• Extending existing classes
• Overloading and overriding methods

Structure of the Java Language

Language syntax

• Declaring and initialising variables
• Statements and expressions
• Declaring and using arrays
• Upcasting, downcasting and autoboxing

Flow control

• Invoking methods and passing parameters
• Conditionals and loops
• Handling exceptions with try and catch

Defining classes

• Fields (instance data)
• Methods (functions)
• Abstract classes and interfaces
• Organising classes with packages and visibility modifiers
• Composition vs. inheritance

Building the components of a Java program

• Working with exiting classes
• Leveraging generics with the collections API
• Extending base classes
• Developing new classes
• Compiling and debugging

Developing GUIs

Foundations of user interfaces

• Basic GUI widgets
• Event-driven programming
• Benefits of a portable windowing library

Java Foundation Classes (JFC)

• Advantages of lightweight Swing components
• Exploring the Swing component library
• Creating Swing components: buttons, text fields, drop-down lists
• Adding Swing components to containers
• Arranging Swing components using layout managers
• Dialogs and message boxes

Event handling

• Registering event handlers
• Inner classes and top-level classes

Storing and Retrieving Data with File I/O

Java streams

• Streams, Readers and Writers
• Accessing files
• Catching and throwing exceptions
• Formatting text output

Files and directories

• Reading and writing files
• Creating, deleting and renaming files
• Obtaining directory and file information

Working with Relational Databases

JDBC database access

• Leveraging the JDBC API
• Choosing database drivers
• Connecting to a database

Improving performance with prepared statements and stored procedures

• Submitting SQL statements
• Retrieving and processing results

Java Development Tools

• Java Development Kit (JDK)
• Compiler (javac)
• Javadoc utility
• Java Archive (JAR) utility
• Java Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)