D.8. Java API Packages

As you’ve seen, Java contains many predefined classes that are grouped into categories of related classes called packages. Together, these are known as the Java Application Programming Interface (Java API), or the Java class library. A great strength of Java is the Java API’s thousands of classes. Some key Java API packages used in this book’s appendices are described in Fig. D.4, which represents only a small portion of the reusable components in the Java API.

Fig. D.4. Java API packages (a subset).

The set of packages available in Java is quite large. In addition to those summarized in Fig. D.4, Java includes packages for complex graphics, advanced graphical user interfaces, printing, advanced networking, security, database processing, multimedia, accessibility (for people with disabilities), concurrent programming, cryptography, XML processing and many other capabilities. Many other packages are also available for download at java.sun.com.