9.1 OVERVIEW

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Basically a compact, object oriented language that iscompiled to a machine independant form. This is then translated before execution for specific machines. The language has similarities to C/C++, and has embedded graphics and networking functions.

This language uses the concept of a virtual machine to compile code. This provides some consistency when translating from the machine independant code into locally executable programs. This makes the code machine independant, and it also allows various protection mechanisms for the local machine, such as virus coruption, and read/write protection of local files.

Java was originally conceived as a language for embedded controllers (and in a way still is). But more recently it has been adapted to the World Wide Web allowing an interactive extension to the normally reactive HTML.

When used with HTML, Java programs are refered to as applets. These applets are binary coded (in a machine language for the virtual machine) and are translated to local machine language after downloading. The applets also checked for corruption using code check values, and checked for any operations that might be illegal locally.