java SE 4 to 8 features

New features in Java SE 8

Lambda Expressions
Pipelines and Streams
Date and Time API
Default Methods
Type Annotations
Nashhorn JavaScript Engine
Concurrent Accumulators
Parallel operations
PermGen Error Removed
TLS SNI

New features in Java SE 7

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
Automatic null Handling

New features in Java SE 6

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

Generics
Enhanced for Loop
Autoboxing/Unboxing
Typesafe Enums
Varargs
Static Import
Metadata (Annotations)
Instrumentation

New features in J2SE 1.4

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