Sebastopol, CA--Many serious Java programmers, especially enterprise Java programmers, consider the new I/O API--called NIO for New Input/Output--the most important feature in the 1.4 version of the Java 2 Standard Edition. The NIO package includes many things that have been missing from previous editions of Java that are critical to writing high-performance, large-scale applications: improvements in the areas of buffer management, scalable network and file I/O, character-set support, and regular expression matching. Most of all, it boosts performance and speed dramatically. Staying current with the latest Java technology is never easy, but O'Reilly's new book, Java NIO by Ron Hitchens (US $34.95), explores Java's new I/O capabilities in detail, showing developers how to put these features to work to greatly improve the efficiency of the code they write.
"Input/output may not be a topic that developers find glamorous, but it's a very important one," says Hitchens. "Most programmers fancy themselves software artists, crafting clever routines to squeeze a few bytes here, unrolling a loop there, or refactoring somewhere else to consolidate objects. While those things are undoubtedly important, the gains made by optimizing code can be easily dwarfed by I/O inefficiencies."
"Java NIO" examines the typical challenges that Java programmers face with I/O and shows them how to take advantage of the Java's new I/O features. Hitchens demonstrates how to put these tools to work using examples of common, real-world I/O problems, and explains how the new features have a direct impact on responsiveness, scalability, and reliability.
This concise volume includes:
- A rundown of the new features in NIO
- Basic and advanced I/O Concepts
- Binary I/O and the new buffer classes
- Memory mapped files and file locking
- Character I/O: encoding, decoding, and transforming character data
- Regular Expressions and the new java.util.regex package
- Muliplexing with java.nio
Because the NIO APIs supplement the I/O features of version 1.3, rather than replace them, developers will also learn when to use new APIs and when the older 1.3 I/O APIs are better suited to their particular applications.
"Java NIO" is intended for intermediate to advanced Java programmers: those who have a good handle on the language and want (or need!) to take full advantage of the new capabilities of Java NIO for large-scale or sophisticated data handling. Programmers who are developing applications where performance is critical will want to give this book a permanent spot on their bookshelf.
Additional resources:
"Java NIO" is also available on Safari Books Online
Chapter 4, Selectors is available free online
More information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, author bio, and samples
Java NIO
Ron Hitchens
ISBN 0-596-00288-2, 302 pages, $34.95 (US), $54.95 (CAN)
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000
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