At Sun, the people who created the
JSP and Servlets specs have specificially stated that these specs are intended for Container developers rather than web component developers. This is true of the
EJB spec, yet the EJB spec contains a lot more practical/usable info for developers, so we definitely recommend that everyone read the EJB spec. But with the JSP and Servlet specs... my recommendation is different.
I would say that
you should DEFINITELY download them and have them on PDF on your computer, but refer to them only when you want more explicit detail or you want the definitive answer (although those aren't always in the spec the way you'd hope), or you have questions.
I DO recommend that you go through the JSTL 1.1 guide, for the core libraries (things that are prefixed with <c: >
, and then flip through so that you have a good feel for what *else* is in JSTL. This is not for the exam, but for the real world.
So, my summary:
* Download the specs and have them handy on your machine to refer to.
* You do not need (and I don't recommend) reading them start to finish.
However, it would not HURT!! It's just not necessary, and may not be the most productive use of your time unless you have a lot of it. Note, this is NOT my general recommendation about specifications, but rather this is the way I feel about *these* specs (JSP and Servlet specs), and the way in which they were written. And again, the authors of those specifications did not intend them to be used by web component developers, so that wasn't their focus.
cheers,
Kathy
