There are 3 types of Java Programming Language Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) :
Third-parties can freely implement any JSR specifications for an official API (even for the core API of the language), providing that they conform to the Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) for this JSR (the TCK is a suite of tests that checks conformance of implementations for a JSR). The result of this freedom is that many official APIs have more implementations than the Sun's Reference implementation (RI).
The following is a partial list of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for the Java Programming Language.
Official APIs
Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE)
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE)
Bundled APIs (part of standard download)
Optional APIs (downloaded separately)
Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME)
Unofficial APIs (Released by third parties)
This list is very incomplete, as the number of APIs available for the Java platform is overwhelming.
- Rich Client Platforms
- Office_compliant libraries
- Compression
- Game engines
- Real-time libraries
- Windowing libraries
- Physics Libraries
Notes
See also