Customer Reviews

Beginning JSP, JSF and Tomcat Web Development: From Novice to Professional

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Okay, I haven't touched JavaServer Pages in some time and this book got me back up to speed pretty quickly. Adding in JSF was easy, which I hadn't used before. It does start a little too basic for my needs and doesn't go quite as deep as I'd like, but overall will have you using JSP and JSF with MySQL within Tomcat pretty quickly. The title is Beginning JSP..., so not going as deep as I'd like is not the book's problem, but more now its time for me to go to the next level and probably look into one of the Pro books.

One complaint with the book is the excessive appendices, almost half. Maybe it is just me, but I think eight pages to specify HTML characters and another 40 pages for an HTML reference seems excessive for the book's topic. With Beginning in the title, I was thinking more beginning JSP and JSF, not beginning HTML.

This book is far to basic and superficial in its treatment of Java Server Faces than anticipated.

There are far too many chapters on how to set up the supporting services and far to little on Java Server Faces. With 8 chapters and 8 appendixes there is only 1 chapter and one appendix on JSF. The other chapters deal with an overview of Web Pages in General, an overview of JSPs, an overview of setting up MySQL (only for a Windows platform), an overview of setting up Tomcat 6 (again only for the Windows Platform) and the underlying structure of Tomcat 6, a superficial discussion of XML technologies such as XPath and XSLT (there are whole BOOKS written on this), a superficial discussion of CSS and HTML and an appendix on the Eclipse platform (ignoring NetBeans or other valid IDE's).

If one is rusty on some of the technologies, it is a great review. But a person new to JSP's and Java Web technology would be very quick to get lost. This does not take you from Novice to Professional. It a surface scratch of a handful of the basic technologies and leaves one wanting. Nowhere near a Professional developer.

On the plus side, if one IS rusty, the discussion of JSP's is a very quick and down and dirty get one back up to speed on Intrinsic Objects, JSP directives JSTL and EL and a slam, bang, thank you mam' on custom tag libraries.

It would do better to get Pro JSP 2, Fourth Edition (Expert's Voice in Java) or a book specifically on JSF if you want to learn JSF.

This book is a good source for beginnerr and a little reference about JSP and JSF. If you need more specific information about the titles you will need another book.

great book for JSP and Tomcat. not very helpful for JSF. I would recommend Core JSF. Good Luck finding it. Shipping was fast - so thats a plus. ;)

Well after reviewing almost every book online and reading the reviews, I thought this Apress book and another on JPA would help me get over the issues I was having trying to incorporate a real world database driven JSP/JSF application. Unfortunately, the book's author simply does not present a start to finish encapsulation of a real business world application. Coming from a .Net background - I find the steps involved in just trying to build the foundation of the application's package to simply create a usable database driven front-end is like purchasing a car in a kit and trying to put it together so you can drive it. The pieces are all there, but the instruction manuals are spotty and don't always compliment one another. If there is an author out there that knows how their stuff, I'd love to work with them to explain how to write a book that will actually help people..I'm sure there are a lot of people out there in the same boat. Good luck, perhaps you can grasp the concepts better than I can - just felt it got me to a point, but crucial pieces were missing. It's not a bad book, I'm probably just a little too green yet to put it all together.

From what I have read so far, this book is really good. It starts with a good introduction then moves into a thorough explanation with a useable example.