Editions

Sun has defined and supports four editions of Java targeting different application environments and segmented many of its APIs so that they belong to one of the platforms. The platforms are:

1. Java Card for smart-cards.
2. Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) – targeting environments with limited resources.
3. Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) – targeting workstation environments.
4. Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) – targeting large distributed enterprise or Internet environments.

The classes in the Java APIs are organized into separate groups called packages. Each package contains a set of related interfaces, classes, subpackages and exceptions. Sun also provided an edition called Personal Java that has been superseded by later, standards-based Java ME configuration-profile pairings.