Dr. David Parsons is an Associate Professor in Information Technology at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand. His research interests are in aspects of technology-enhanced learning, in particular mobile learning and virtual world learning, and in agile software development. He also provides consultancy and professional software training services on behalf of Massey University's Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences.

The Java Story.- Compiling and Running Java Programs.- Data Types, Arithmetic and Arrays.- Control Structures.- Creating Objects.- Creating Domain Classes.- Objects Working Together: Association, Aggregation and Composition.- Inheritance, Polymorphism and Interfaces.- Exception handling.- Unit Testing With JUnit.- Exploring the Java Libraries.- The Collections Framework and Generics.- Input and Output Streams.- Automatic Building and Testing with Ant.- Java and the Database (JDBC).- Multithreading.- Building GUIs with the JFC Swing Library.- Event Driven Programming.- Dialogs and Menus, Models and Views.- Java Web Start and Applets.

This book presents a guide to the core features of Java - and some more recent innovations - enabling the reader to build skills and confidence though tried-and-trusted stages, supported by exercises that reinforce key learning points. All of the most useful and commonly applied Java syntax and libraries are introduced, along with many example programs that can provide the basis for more substantial applications. Use of the Eclipse IDE and the JUnit testing framework is integral to the book, ensuring maximum productivity and code quality, although to ensure that skills are not confined to one environment the fundamentals of the Java compiler and run time are also explained.

Additionally, coverage of the Ant tool will equip the reader with the skills to automatically build, test and deploy applications independent of an IDE.

Features: presents information on Java 7; contains numerous code examples and exercises; provides source code, self-test questions and PowerPoint slides at an associated website.