Customer Reviews

Java for the Web with Servlets, JSP, and EJB: A Developer's Guide to J2EE Solutions

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I can't believe there is one Java Web book that covers all plus more:
Servlets 2.3, JSP 1.2, EJB 2.0, JavaScript, and teaches you how to use
those technologies in real-world projects. There are so many things you
can't find in other servlet/JSP books.

Here are my favorite chapters:
Chapter 4 gives you wide coverage of how to use JDBC in a Web application.
Chapter 5 is an excellent chapter on session management. Very thorough.
Chapters 6 and 7 discuss the new features of servlet 2.3: application and
session events and filters.
Chapter 12 is only 5 pages but it offers you the technique you don't find
in other Web programming books: how to send a file to the browser and make
the browser display the "Save As" dialog.
Chapter 13 explains how to upload files in depth. This is definitely not
covered in most servlet/JSP books.
Chapter 15 teaches you how to cache your data to greatly improve
performance.
Chapter 17 teaches you how to design your application.
Chapter 27 is full of tips on how to control applets using JavaScript.

Also, the bonus software in the CD is invaluable:
- The file upload bean enables you to upload files effortlessly, you just
need to copy the .jar file into the lib directory under your application's
WEB-INF directory. According to the back cover and the author section,
this bean is licensed by Fortune 500 company Commerce One and the code is
used in the example code of IBM's WebSphere J2EE server documentation!
- The file download makes sending files to the browser error-free.

There are 3 ready-to-use projects:
- E-commerce site based on the Model 2 architecture. This is a perfect
example of how to implement the recommended Model 2 architecture.
- XML-based e-book. Very unique, you can use this to create your own
online documentation and more importantly it's browser-independent.
- Document management, this is my favorite. I am impressed by the
navigation tree that really looks like Windows Explorer. I did not know
that it is possible to do so with JavaScript. It enables you to give
permission to certain people to access certain files.

The EJB section of this book is not the most complete, but surprisingly it
is easy to understand.
One thing that this book does not have is the discussion of the Jakarta
Struts project. But, overall I am very happy and wish this book had come
out much earlier.

O, btw, another thing that makes this book different is one section in the
introduction. It talks about the battle between J2EE vs Microsoft .NET.
Very interesting.

This is an excellent book. I'm a Java instructor and this book is structured as if the writer is a teacher and the reader a student. There are no leaps of faith or "assumed" knowledge. The author patiently explains the purpose of all relavent information before easing into new material. Besides being written in a friendly manner, the material is thorough which includes several appendix topics for setting up classpath, etc.
If you're struggling to find a great J2EE book without spending [money] on multiple texts, take a close look at this one.

This comprehensive volume covers Java Servlets, JSP and Enterprise Java Beans technology. Style of presentation is lucid and equips the readers to develop a full fledge e-commerce appplication from scratch. Advanced topics like security configuration,caching, file upload are explained in detail with suitable real world examples which are rarely found in similar books.

Instead of commercial servers, examples are based on free open source server (Tomcat and JBoss) which makes this book all the more interesting for students and developers alike.

This volume is highly recommended for beginners and well as advanced web developers.

I bought this book after reading the author?s article at Java Pro site on file download. That article helped me solved the problem I had had for weeks. Previously I had tried to find the solution in many books, not only servlet/JSP books, but also ASP and PHP books, to no avail. This technique (how to send a file and make the browser display the Save window) is simple, i.e. it works by adding a certain HTTP header. Surprisingly, the author was the first (and probably the only one) to publish such a technique. I think all web programming books should include this important technique.

The book comes with free file download bean that is very easy to use, and also explains how it works. I don?t understand why the other reader from South Africa experienced problems with the bean because the bean works on the server side. Once the file gets sent to the browser, its the browser?s responsibility to save it to disk. Was he using a non-standard browser? (I myself use Netscape and IE) I also disagree with his view on long code. Pages of code, to me, show that the author was really serious in presenting real-world projects. What?s important is the code is well documented and easy to understand, which it is.

The author seems to be a programmer himself. He knows what the real problems in web programming are and offers solutions to them. This is a very good book.

I bought this book, after spending two hours comparing this with the other two popular titles, "Core Servlets and JSP" and "More Servlets and JSP". The three are supposed to be the best titles in the category.

It was not an easy job. The three are well written and explain the concepts very clearly. I failed "Core Servlets" straight away, because it covers Servlets 2.2 and JSP 1.1 and not the more recent 2.3 and 1.2. "More Servlets" has a better cover than this book and it was published by Prentice Hall, a more prestigious publishing company than New Riders. However, looking into the table of contents more closely, I could point out that this book (Java for the Web), with 200 more pages, has much more meat. It beats "More Servlets" in almost all aspects, except that "More Servlets" covers JSTL beta. However, this book covers many more not found in "More Servlets", such as caching, file upload, document management, JavaScript, EJB, Application Design, etc. There is also some freebie software not found in "More Servlets".

After reading half the book, I would say I'm very happy with it. Well done.

This book is a must-have for those who want to learn to program for the web with Java. This is one of the best book I ever bought. Examples are well designed and explained. I particularly
like the fact that the author gives step-by-step instructions on
how to reproduce the examples.
If you're new to Java, buy this book first. Your money is worth
three times.

1. It is easy to read and includes step by step explaination.

2. All in One for J2EE study, very details, especially in Web application(chapter 1 - 27)

3. The book also includes project examples for java web application(chapter 18-20: Developing e-commmerce application, XML-based E-Books, and Web-Based Document Management). The examples give me a deep undestanding on how to combine/choose Servlet, JSP, and/or JavaScript for developing a certain web application

4. The book will be really excellent if the author can also provide a project example for EJB Application (chapter 28-33) like the ones for web application (see no 3).

After reading all the positive comments, I bought this book. After reading it, I was totally disappointed.
The writing style is good, but technically this book is weak and full of errors. There is no doubt that the author never tested the code. The code listing on the CD rom is just a bunch of text files ending with with .txt extension. The book is no more than a copy & paste of stuff taken off the net. For example, to explain the BMP entity bean, the author used a ProductBEan example, in the ejbLoad() call, the product ID member field was used. But does the author understand the ID field must be set somehow? This is done in the ejbActivate() call in SUN's online tutorial, but in the book the ejbActive() is empty. Clearly, the author does not understand the life-cycle of ejbs.

So if you are looking for a J2EE book, look elsewhere, if you are trying to learn some JSP, it may offer some help.

This book attempts to cover a wide range of topics with varying degrees of success. The book could have been a lot better had the author chosen fewer topics and provided more detail.

There were a couple of times, where I was very dissapointed with the level of detail, for example, pages and pages of JavaScript, but an odd sentence on database connection pooling. The author also does strange things. He sets out to use MySQL in the book and then goes on to use MS Access for a case study (those queries could have been written to work with MySQL -IMHO) - I'm also pretty sure that the Linux users out there also loved this one!

Through out the book I kept on getting the feeling that things were done only half measure. A prime example is the file download bean that gets provided with the book. The bean works, but the implementation is far from perfect, e.g if a bigger file exists, then it overwrites only the first part of the file, leaving the rest of the content - this is plain irrating with text files, but with binary files, well... (I ended up just writing my own).

That pretty much sums up the book. If you are a just starting out with JSP/Servlets then this book is probably an OK place to start, but there a better books out there - have a look at the books that Marty Hall wrote - I've got an old version, but time and again I find my answers in his book, not this one.

I had read this book from cover to cover at the O'Reilly Safari online library before deciding to buy the print edition. It is the most solid servlet/JSP book around with plenty exmples. YOu won't beleive how smoothly the author moves from one topic to another. No wonder this title is among the Top 5 (most subscribed to) book at Safari.