Java Version History
Thought to share some of the old Java version released
New features in Java SE 7
Code named Dolphin and released on July 28, 2011.
- Strings in switch Statement
- Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation
- Multiple Exception Handling
- Support for Dynamic Languages
- Try with Resources
- Java nio Package
- Binary Literals, underscore in literals
- Diamond Syntax
New features in Java SE 6
Code named Mustang and released on December 11, 2006
- Scripting Language Support
- JDBC 4.0 API
- Java Compiler API
- Pluggable Annotations
- Native PKI, Java GSS, Kerberos and LDAP support.
- Integrated Web Services.
- Lot more enhancements.
New features in J2SE 5.0
Code named Tiger and released on September 30, 2004.
- Generics
- Enhanced for Loop
- Autoboxing/Unboxing
- Typesafe Enums
- Varargs
- Static Import
- Metadata (Annotations)
- Instrumentation
New features in J2SE 1.4
Code named Merlin and released on February 6, 2002 (first release under JCP)
- XML Processing
- Java Print Service
- Logging API
- Java Web Start
- JDBC 3.0 API
- Assertions
- Preferences API
- Chained Exception
- IPv6 Support
- Regular Expressions
- Image I/O API
New features in J2SE 1.3
Code named Kestrel and released on May 8, 2000.
- Java Sound
- Jar Indexing
- A huge list of enhancements in almost all the java area.
New features in J2SE 1.2
Code named Playground and released on December 8, 1998.
- Collections framework.
- Java String memory map for constants.
- Just In Time (JIT) compiler.
- Jar Signer for signing Java ARchive (JAR) files.
- Policy Tool for granting access to system resources.
- Java Foundation Classes (JFC) which consists of Swing 1.0, Drag and Drop, and Java 2D class libraries.
- Java Plug-in
- Scrollable result sets, BLOB, CLOB, batch update, user-defined types in JDBC.
- Audio support in Applets.
New features in JDK 1.1
- JDBC (Java Database Connectivity)
- Inner Classes
- Java Beans
- RMI (Remote Method Invocation)
- Reflection (introspection only)
JDK Version 1.0
Codenamed Oak and released on January 23, 1996.
Wishing you a happy new year!
TechMyTalk 
automatic null handling in java 7 ???did i miss something?
Means its null safe pls refer below linkhttp://blog.joda.org/2009/01/java-7-null-default-and-null-safe_7527.html?m=1
I'm pretty sure that didn't happen for Java 7; the link just refers to the plan to include it in Java 7 (but predates Java 7).
http://blog.joda.org/2009/01/java-7-null-default-and-null-safe_7527.html?m=1 is someone's 2009 wish list item for jdk7.I suggest you read the jdk release notes for each version to see what changes have been made and new features introduced.
Thanks for pointing It. Rectified