Java’s Primitive Types Java contains two general categories of built-in data types: object-oriented and non-object-oriented. Java’s object-oriented types are defined byclasses, and a discussion of classes is deferred until later. However, at thecore of Java are eight primitive (also called elemental or simple) types ofdata, which are shown in Table 2-1. The term primitive is used here to indicate that these types are not objects in an object-oriented sense, butrather, normal binary values. These primitive types are not objects becauseof efficiency concerns. All of Java’s other data types are constructed fromthese primitive types.