Customer Reviews

Instant JavaServer Pages (Book/CD-ROM Package)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book starts right from basics... from what are JSP and the standard "HelloWorld" Example in JSP form. It does not assume prior knowledge from the user. Also, Mr. Tremblett has given some very practical examples which can be used directly in the Real World.. One Example is of a Login Manager to handle user logins to a web site. Another example explains building a shopping cart --Online Store web site using JSPs. The author then builds on this same example by providing Customer feedback ,product evaluation,customer survey forms and frequent shopper programs. He also lists many small miscellaneous useful programs. A feature I found very useful is the step by step "for Dummies approach " appendix on how to create your own JSP Environment ...setting the system configuration..and setting up the databses...which is usually a very boring and time consuming job which is prone to errors. I dont know why the author has put it in appendix at the end. It should be put in the beginning. Also, I wish the author had included more XML examples in this book. Those working on ecommerce web sites and sites whose data changes dynamically like stock finance sites, weather sites will find the book invaluable.

This book is a great book for beginners to intermediates. It is chalked full of real world examples. The book is very easy to follow and goes at a good pace. It does have a few spelling errors, but still a very good book. If you are looking for an intro book to learn JSP, this book is a great starting off point.

Mr. Tremblett deserves high praise. Being new to JSP - I was immediately able to utilize the techniques outlined. The e-commerce and survey references are already proving to be invaluable to my particular situation....looking forward to spending many late nights digging deeper. The supplied source code is an added bonus!

I went looking for a good book on JSP, preferably with some code to illuminate my natural resistance to general explanations of technologies. I am generally an example-first learner (as opposed to a general-case-first learner). Boy was I happy when I found this book. Instant JavaServer Pages gets right to the point, presenting important JSP concepts and illustrating them with code you can put to use in the real world. The CD-ROM conatins the code from the book, along with GNU JSP and Apache to get you started. Along with Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages (which explains more about how things work with Servlets and JSPs), I managed to get a web-based account management system going within several days using the examples from this book. The example code also shows how easy it is to use JavaBeans with JSPs (I was ignorant of the JavaBean-JSP relationship before I read this book). His examples that use a database are based on Postgres, so they may need a little modification for your flavor of SQL, but otherwise this is an outstanding book.

I will admit that the book does have some very good information on JSP. The code in the book is good, and the code does work for real life situations. However, this book was a tough read for me. I found that this book at times would drone on and on about some definitions that may or may not actually help you in the real world. In addition, I wish that it explained more adequately about setting up your Java environment for a Windows o/s. The book gives a very detailed installation on Unix, but virtually nothing for any Windows o/s, which to me is strange since most people have Win 95', 98' or NT. If you want to get snippets of code that will help you at the job, then this book is great. However, if you are new to JSP and trying to figure JSP out, or have a Windows box, then find another book.

JavaServer Pages (JSP) is one of the hot Java technologies. For the experienced Java developer, JSP is not difficult to learn. For the inexperienced Java developer, JSP is not a good place to start. Which leads me to wonder who might be the target audience for "Instant JavaServer Pages". There are serious holes in what this book covers that will leave most developers looking for additional resources. Some examples:

* The author spends less than one page discussing taglibs, most of which is simply taken from the version 1.1 specification.
* Although using JSP with XML is prominently featured on the cover of the book, the author spends more pages discussing how to install and configure PostgreSQL to run the examples than he does on XML.
* On page 4, the author tells us that JSP can be used to generate WML but no examples of this are to be found in the book.

If this book was 200 pages long I might understand this missing material, but the author spends 500 pages explaining no more than the basics of using JSP. That being said, the book is not all bad. The author repeatedly demonstrates the proper use of JSP for creating a user interface. His many examples stress that business logic should be placed in Java Beans and those beans invoked by a JSP. The fact is, however, that although the author does well with the material covered, there is too much material left out for me to recommend this book.

I read every page of this book, studied all the code, set it up, and made it all run. It was my first introduction to JAVA and JSP. I had a very complex site running within 2 weeks! I'm now using much of the modified code in a site I'm developing. It runs well under a reasonable load although I think some of the database beans blow up if the JVM runs out of memory. I got a fast and thorough, hands on, understanding of how to build a dynamic web site with database support. As the author says, certain parts of this code may not be industrial strength, but it isn't far from it - I'm having no problems after just a little tweaking. Extremely easy to read and thoroughly explained code. This is not a book for reading on the couch; this is a book to consult while you are sitting at your computer, developing your site.

Platform: Sun/Ultra OS:Solaris 8 HTTP: Apache latest JSP: Tomcat 3latest DB: MySQL 3.23 Java: 1.30 JDBC: mmMySQL 2.04

I had to create some important code workarounds for MySQL (the book uses PostGRE). All in all, I made only about 17 changes to the original code, including about 8 errors I found. If you want a great book with ready to use code to put together your own dynamic site with database support, this is it. Use Linux and PostGRE and everything else he uses.

I bought this book and found the first 3 chapters usable. They devote over 100 pages to Appendicies that aren't all the useful. The remaining chapters(beyond the first 3 or 4) are useful in gaining an understanding on how to attack business problems, but lack a real solution or 'good' code, which they even say themselves isn't what you would use in corporate life. Not even a good book ... Complete waste of $ in my opinion.