Customer Reviews

Professional Java Server Programming: with Servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSP), XML, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), JNDI, CORBA, Jini and Javaspaces

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

An excellent resource for conceptualizing internet development resources. Lot's of excellent diagrams for visual learners. Lot's of examples for hands-on practice. The best thing I liked about this book is that it assumes you know nothing, but at the same time does not "dummy down" the material. Each chapter has a high-level overview of the topic including industry or historical information. Then there is more detail with an example and the example is broken down step by step. Although written by many people it flows quite well.

I am new to server side programming, and relatively new to Java. This book is packed with great information, even for me. Three chapters into the book I couldn't wait to get started, and I was already equipped with enough information to write basic server side programs. Some of the things that I found most valuable: Information on how to configure some of the more popular web servers to run Java Servlets; An explanation of HTTP; The pros and cons of CGI, JavaServer Pages, Active Server Pages, and Java Servlets; Detailed information about the Java Servlet API.

It does not contain a lot of information about Java programming in general (syntax, general API info, etc., ) so if you are new to Java you will need a Java API book to supplement.

Pro:

*) Covers a lot of ground on up to date (01/2000) server side tech, Servlets, JSP, RMI, XML, EJB, JINI, CORBA, JNDI, LDAP, JDBC, Mime, cookies, Internationalization.

*) Lots of hands-on details with many examples.

*) Very fluent and usually clear.

Con:

*) Very little on theory, concepts, server architecture using these technologies or trends, goes straight to the details.

*) Many exercises don't work without some hacking (they could still fix it, the code is on their site).

*) So much is about Java Servlets you would think Sun published it.

*) Not all the chapters are in the same level, you can feel many people wrote the book.

I bought this book for one reason only: the chapter on JSP Programming. Unlike the light examples mostly available on the web, the chapter explores a lot of the features of JSP, including delcaratives, error pages, java beans (very important), connecting to databases, a summary of the implicit objects available to the environmnent, and more. The author took the time to understand the underlying architecture and explain it. I found it to be tremendously helpful.

Mark

This book is outstanding! It covers the new features of JSDK2.1 wonderfully. It introduces JSP and other J2EE features. I recommend this book to all current Java Server programmers and to all who want to learn about Java Server Programming. The depth is wonderful and the examples are very good. The only knock is that it is expensive and you don't get a CD. However, there is a web site to download the source code, nice touch Wrox Press! Even though the book is expensive it is well worth the money! Knowing what I know now, I still would buy it again. But this time I would by it through Amazon so I get a discount. :-) Note, I paid full price and still think I got a great deal.

I originally bought this book for its information on Javaserver Pages, but this book contains much much more. It covered areas like Database connections and connection pooling, EJBs, etc. that normally you need seperate books for each topic. The examples are small (a good thing) and clearly demonstrate the topics presented. If you want to do javaserver programming, this is the book!

I had never seen this book before but I decided to buy it since there are a lot of good comments on it. However, once I got the book, I immediately realized that I had made a big mistake. This book is full of the information that you can find anywhere on the Internet for free. So why do you have to pay for it?

Reading this book gives me the feeling of reading a thousand-page magazine. The publisher puts into the book so many topics that you don't find anything conprehensible enough for a practical use.

If you want to program servlets, go for Java Servlet Programming from O'Reilly. If you want to program JSP pages, download the JSP spec from java.sun.com.

If you want to do something else, buy other books.

Everything you need to get started with server-side Java programming is in this book. It starts off with several chapters covering Servlets, then a solid chapter on JSP, followed by coverage of JDBC, and a chapter on database connection pools. This would have been enough for a complete book, but it doesn't stop there. There is also good coverage of XML, RMI, JNDI, EJB, and more.

To me, this book is an essential reference for anyone doing server-side Java programming. It has been an invaluable resource on my current programming project. I continually recommend it to my co-workers.

The book has a good balance of example code and explanations, and the authors generally have very good writing styles which make the technical material relatively easy to understand. However, at times you can tell that the book has many authors because not all of the chapters are of the same quality. In particular, I though chapters 5 and 6 were not as well written as most of the others.

One minor criticism of the book is that even though it is over 1,000 pages it is printed in a rather small font which made it a little hard to read. I would have preferred that one or two of the less important chapters be excluded so that a normal font size could have been used.

This book is also a great value for the price. Many technical books don't cover half as much material for the same price. I highly recommend it.

As a Java Developer I was looking more for a reference and minimal set of abstract examples on how to use the syntax of jsp directives, jsp structures, and servlet practices. EJB and XML coverage was very minimal and despite my previous WROX book Professional ASP 2.0 (which was excellent) this book fails in regards to teaching the foundational practices of JSP and Servlets. It is indeed loaded with lots of examples including a good case study called, El Weeds of Limon. The explanations were very surfacy and didn't have enough of the technical details. The type of detail missed should be assumed from books that try to cover too many topics which spread the "meat" of the matter very thin.

Rather than getting you started on the right track it gets you started by making you copy examples which IMHO is a poor way to learn especially if the examples are not very generic.

I recently picked up a better book which includes all the jsp and servlet best practices, perfect amount of HTML mixture in handling forms, etc. and also a broad coverage of the currently available JSP/Servlet Containers like the Jakarta group's Tomcat 3.1 Container.

I would recommend this book if you're looking for examples, period. However if you want to learn JSP and Servlet technology the proper way pick up Core Servlets and JSP by Sun Press. It's also more up to date with the JSP 1.1/Servlet 2.2 spec.

This book is one of the must-have books for anyone serious about writing server-side Java programs. Sure you can find a lot of the information on the net, but I don't think that most professionals want to rely just on the net as their only resource now do they? I've had this book for many months now and it's the most popular book at work. It's jam-packed full of good server-side programming ideas and techniques. And it covers a lot of the bases with enough depth to get you more than started.

There are over ten chapters dealing with Servlets. There is only one chapter on JSP (29 pages), but anything you need to know about JSP you can get out of that one chapter. Servlets are what you should be concerned about anyway as you are looking for a hardcore Java Server Programming book right? The chapter on Smart Servlets is a better approach than JSP anyway.

The book isn't just about Servlets, however. There's also good coverage of XML, Distributed Computing with Servlets (using RMI), and Enterprise Javabeans. And more!

Want a big bonus this year? Get this book! Want to eventually lose your job and end up at McDonalds? Don't get this book. It's nice to know you have choices. :)