Java SE

Java Platform, Standard Edition or Java SE is a widely used platform for development and deployment of portable code for desktop and server environments. Java SE uses the object-oriented Java programming language. It is part of the Java software-platform family. Java SE defines a wide range of general-purpose APIs – such as Java APIs for the Java Class Library – and also includes the Java Language Specification and the Java Virtual Machine Specification. One of the most well-known implementations of Java SE is Oracle Corporation's Java Development Kit (JDK).

Java SE was known as Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition or J2SE from version 1.2 until version 1.5. The "SE" is used to distinguish the base platform from the Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Micro Edition (Java ME) platforms. The "2" was originally intended to emphasize the major changes introduced in version 1.2, but was removed in version 1.6. The naming convention has been changed several times over the Java version history. Starting with J2SE 1.4 (Merlin), Java SE has been developed under the Java Community Process, which produces descriptions of proposed and final specifications for the Java platform called Java Specification Requests (JSR). JSR 59 was the umbrella specification for J2SE 1.4 and JSR 176 specified J2SE 5.0 (Tiger). Java SE 6 (Mustang) was released under JSR 270.

Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) is a related specification that includes all the classes in Java SE, plus a number that are more useful to programs that run on servers as opposed to workstations.

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