This Weeks GiveAway:

[Carl Trusiak]

This week we are giving away four copies of "Professional JSP 2nd Edition", and the Author, Simon Brown, is on-line!
Angela gave it 10 Horseshoes!!! "This book will tell you just about anything you need to know. [about JSPs]"
Everyone give Simon a warm JavaRanch Welcome

[Simon Brown]

Thanks Carl and hello everybody!
I look forward to "meeting" you all and trying to answer any questions that you have on Servlets, JSPs and taglibs. As I'm based in the UK, I apologise in advance for any delay in replying.
Do keep the questions coming in though!
Cheers
Simon
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Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[sanj singh]

Hi Simon
Which company do you work for in UK and where do you live?
regards
sanj

[Simon Brown]

Hi Sanj,
I live and work in London for a company called Concise (http://www.concise.co.uk) - they are a J2EE solutions provider, mainly focussed on architecting, designing and implementing Java systems for the finance industry.
Cheers
Simon
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Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[ken chou]

Hi, Simon:
Would you like to introduce yourself a little bit, like your education, working experience, how long you have been working with Java Technology?

[Paul Roubekas]

What is your thinking on where the dividing line should go between filling a requirement in JSP code or a Servlets?

[tim gunning]

Hi
I am interested to know your views on the advantages/disadvantages of jsp's.
Personally for webservers I prefer Apache and run mostly through either Perl or PHP with a MySQL backend and find that this more than caters for my needs and cannot see any advantage in changing, esp when I cannot even connect to your server and get this back from a ping.
PING 193.128.119.158 (193.128.119.158): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 193.128.119.158: icmp_seq=12 ttl=242 time=3427.789 ms
64 bytes from 193.128.119.158: icmp_seq=45 ttl=242 time=4742.297 ms
64 bytes from 193.128.119.158: icmp_seq=60 ttl=242 time=7097.904 ms
64 bytes from 193.128.119.158: icmp_seq=88 ttl=242 time=5436.206 ms
^C
--- 193.128.119.158 ping statistics ---
152 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 97% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 3427.789/5176.049/7097.904/1323.420 ms
although I'd have to say that its sods law for this to happen today
but seriously I am intrigued to hear your views as I know very little about jsps and would like to know more
regards
tim

[Marcus Green]

What are the main differences between Release 1 and Release 2 of the JSP book. I have release 1, which I really like and gave a good review. I am working on a project with some other people to create some documentation for the new Web Component Developer Exam and I was wondering what are the main new topics in the revised version.
Marcus
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http://www.jchq.net Mock Exams, FAQ, Tutorial, Links, Book reviews
=================================================
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[Simon Brown]

Hi Ken,
Certainly ... here's my bio, taken from the JSIG website.
"Based in London, Simon Brown is a Technical Architect with Concise - a Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) solutions provider. Simon has over 4 years experience of Java and related technologies, during which he has provided technical leadership, mentoring and training. Outside of work he has spoken at several Java events including a number of BOFs at JavaOne 2001, has been published in JavaWorld and more recently, has contributed to the 2nd edition of Professional JSP published by Wrox Press.
Simon graduated from the University of Reading in 1996 with a First class BSc (Hons) degree in Computer Science, and is now a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE, and a Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform."
Basically I've been using Java for around 4 years now - from AWT and Swing, to serverside applications with and without the J2EE.
Simon
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Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Simon Brown]

Hi Paul,
I'm a strong believer in the use of JSP tags and beans for cleaning up and moving the business logic out of JSPs. For this reason, I mainly use JSPs for building pages and they generally only contain a very limited amount of logic to control presentation. I tend to use Servlets for more complex processing of forms, etc in an MVC style.
Simon

Originally posted by Paul Roubekas:
What is your thinking on where the dividing line should go between filling a requirement in JSP code or a Servlets?

------------------
Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Simon Brown]

Hi Tim,
At the end of the day, it comes down to personal preference and whether your chosen toolset does the job. If so, there's no point in changing.
However, there are other factors that come into play. For example, our clients tend to look at building high performance, scalable, maintainable component based systems. They have chosen Java/J2EE as their platform on which to do this as it can deliver on all of these requirements. There are many more besides this...
From my perspective, I got into Java over four years ago because it (and its potential) interested me and that's still holding true. It is partly the language, but there's also the other pieces of the puzzle such as the design patterns, the J2EE patterns, architectures for distributed systems and also, the way that "elegant" solutions can be designed and implemented.
This of course all overlaps on to JSPs too. I first saw JSPs at JavaOne (1999 I think) and to be honest, I wasn't impressed at all as it seemed like just another way of building pages to generate dynamic HTML content. However, as the specifications have been enhanced and improved, JSPs are now a very effective tool for building and delivering dynamic content. Couple JSPs with custom tag extensions, JavaBeans, Servlets and the rest of the J2EE and you have a very powerful toolkit.
That's my thoughts ... what does everybody else think?
Simon

Originally posted by tim gunning:
Hi
I am interested to know your views on the advantages/disadvantages of jsp's.
Personally for webservers I prefer Apache and run mostly through either Perl or PHP with a MySQL backend and find that this more than caters for my needs and cannot see any advantage in changing
[...]
but seriously I am intrigued to hear your views as I know very little about jsps and would like to know more
regards
tim

------------------
Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Simon Brown]

Hi Marcus,
The 2nd edition of the book covers the new JSP and Servlet specifications (1.2 and 2.3 respectively) and has material to demonstrate the new features. The book as a whole seems to hang together much better now and the result is a book that is good for reading cover to cover, and also for reference.
You'll find a lot of useful material in the 2nd edition for the WCD exam, although there are a fair few detailed questions on Servlets and the web deployment descriptor file that isn't covered.
Here's the table of contents - http://www.wrox.com/Books/Book_toc.asp?section=1_1&isbn=1861004958&subject=&subject_id=
Cheers
Simon

Originally posted by Marcus Green:
What are the main differences between Release 1 and Release 2 of the JSP book. I have release 1, which I really like and gave a good review. I am working on a project with some other people to create some documentation for the new Web Component Developer Exam and I was wondering what are the main new topics in the revised version.
Marcus

------------------
Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Angela Poynton]

Welcome to Javaranch Simon.
I reviewed Professional JSP 2nd Edition for the Bunkhouse and gave 10 stars
I also used to use the first edition when I first started learning about JSP and while I also found that edition very helpful, the extended chapters on developing custom tags in this edition meant that the 2nd edition landed on my desk in a very timely way, just as i was asked to develop some tags for my company's website, just going through these chapters made that whole experience much much easier than it otherwise may have been.
I see your contribution to the book was about how JSP fits into the J2EE infrastructure. Currently our e-commerce dept we working on coverting a huge amount of JHTML pages to JSP also fitting the MVC pattern in at the same time. It's actually working out quite well and it has allowed us to split the work in the department more effectively ... allowing authors to deal with presentation, and web-developers deal with tags and servlets and other developers to write EJBs etc. All too often in the past all these jobs got mixed up.
I personally think JSP has revolutionised J2EE, making it far simpler to make a simple presentational change. It's so easy to use as well.
Anyway I call you book my bible and am constantly lending it out to collegues. I'm also very glad it covers Servlets v2.3 and JSP v1.2 since these are the APIs used for the new Web Component exam.
Enjoy your time here and Javaranch and feel free to come and visit us anytime.

[Simon Brown]

Thanks Angela!
I've been lurking around the 'ranch for a while now but I've always been fairly quiet. Everybody seems very friendly though.
Yes, my contribution to the book was a chapter about how JSP can access resources from the J2EE and specifically EJB. It goes though example architectures with and without J2EE, and then explores how to use scriptlets, JavaBeans and finally custom tags to access EJBs.
I have a copy of my desk too but people keep walking off with it! There's an awful lot of material in the book and if you have a question about JSPs ... chances are that it will be in there.
Thanks again!
Simon
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Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Madhav Lakkapragada]

Man!!! 10 horseshoes.....just wanted to make my
presence........
Welcome Simon.
- satya

[Jayson Falkner]

10 Horses!
Hey congrats Simon, that must be quite a book! ;) Glad to have you here.
Out of curiosity, how did you like working with the 17 other authors?

[Anthony Hodge]

Hi Simon
I'm a beginning Java programmer (actually an old mainframe dinosaur programmer who has read a lot and done the one week Sun Java course)whose interested in learning about JSP. One of the problems I have in getting 'beginner' books is that they often try to teach you very basic programming skills which, after 20+ years in the industry, I don't need. The next level of books up tend to expect you to have a working knowledge of the topic which may be slightly beyond me. My question is (assuming a reasonable level of intelligence and the ability to grasp new ideas fairly quickly): Is your book appropriate for me to learn JSP or should I stick with a beginner book that may have far too much padding? I generally would prefer to put in a little effort to understand the text rather than be bored by it.
TIA
Tony

[Mike Whitehorne]

I would also agree that this is a very well done book.

[Simon Brown]

Thanks for the compliments everybody but I can't take the credit for the entire book. There were 18 authors that contributed material, including Jayson. (see above)
Wrox have two streams of books - Beginning and Professional. The Beginning series starts at the beginning and introduces everything necessary to teach the topic (including the basics). The Professional series on the other hand assumes a certain starting knowledge and dives straight in.
If you know Java already, Professional JSP will have you building dynamic websites in no time at all!
Hope that helps...
Cheers
Simon
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Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition
[This message has been edited by Simon Brown (edited July 17, 2001).]

[Sean Seaman]

Simon,
Did you participate in the writing of this book in order to gain in depth experience with JSP? I've heard many writers operate in this way - because the pay-off from book publishing is small, the real value is the time you get to spend with a particular technology.

[Simon Brown]

I've also heard this, but I can safely say that I knew the topic before I started writing.
One of the projects that I was involved in last year made use of J2EE and XML in a big way. I was responsible for the presentation aspects of the application and it was here that I really learnt in-depth about JSPs, taglibs and of course EJBs.
Much of the taglib knowledge gained on this project formed the basis of the BOFs that I presented at JavaOne this year too.
Cheers
Simon
------------------
Simon Brown
Author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Dan Lund]

Im reading Ivor Horton`s book now, Beginning Java 2. When Im done with that can I begin to read your book or must I learn something in between? Just want ot know so I dont start on it and I find out that its too difficult...

[Nick Kellett]

Hi Simon. Your book sounds great. Can I ask you: when writing JSP pages, at what point do you decide to use JavaBeans on the page or create your own custom tags (more effort)? What are some of the criteria you use for deciding when a custom tag is worth it?

[Emmanuel Bakare]

Hi Simon ,
I am a beginner in Servlets and I got stuck while trying to
run the clients web page request to the server, I could not get
it to work. I have also downLoaded the Servlet class.
Please help.
Regards,
Emmanuel Bakare.
London

[Emmanuel Bakare]

Hi Simon ,
I am a beginner in Servlets and I got stuck while trying to
run the clients web page request to the server, I could not get
it to work. I have also downLoaded the Servlet class.
Please help.
Regards,
Emmanuel Bakare.
London

[ken chou]

Hi, Emmanuel:
Why do you need to post exactly the same question twice?

[erik weibust]

i have a question. what is the difference in getting the jsp/servlet api's from sun vs getting them with tomcat? aren't they the exact api's?
thanks,
erik

[Ricardo Polero]

Hi,
Would you tell your opinion of the new Sun Certification in JSP , etc
Thx in adv

[niranjan pulipati]

Hai simon,
I have a small problem. I have a variable in JavaScript and without submitting the page i want tuse that value of the variable in JSP code.. Is it possible if so please give me solution..
Thanks & Regards
Niranjan

[Paul Michael]

greetings Ranchers! just wanted to share how i found about the new WROX book. i was in a bookstore last sunday and was trying to check out some servlet/jsp books. that's where i saw the 1st professional jsp book. i looked it up on amazon and saw the great reviews on the 2nd edition of the book. congratulations to Simon and the rest of the Team!

and oh about the giveaway... im keeping my fingers crossed!!!

[sunil choudhary]

Hello Simon
best wishes for the new Release book
( I have read the earlier one )

regards
Sunil
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_________________________Logic is the art of non contradictory existence
Ayn Rand-Atlus Shrugged

[vasudevan gopalan]

Hi Simon,
Welcome to javaranch.com.I am having
proffesional JSP 1st edition.I want to know the added topics in second edition.
Bye,
Vasudevan
[This message has been edited by vasudevan gopalan (edited July 17, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by vasudevan gopalan (edited July 17, 2001).]

[Simon Brown]

Hi Dan,
That's a tough question. Wrox have a Beginning JSP book coming out soon (check out www.wrox.com) so I would probably recommend that you have a look at both books before making a purchase.
Although saying that, the Professional JSP book would probably be better as it doesn't recover all the basic Java and OO stuff that you would have learnt in Ivor's book.
Hope that helps...
Simon

Originally posted by Dan Lund:
Im reading Ivor Horton`s book now, Beginning Java 2. When Im done with that can I begin to read your book or must I learn something in between? Just want ot know so I dont start on it and I find out that its too difficult...

------------------
Simon Brown
Co-author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Simon Brown]

Hi Nick,
As a rule of thumb, I tend to use beans for :
(1) maintaining and accessing information (particularly session information)
(2) business or value objects
and tags for :
(1) controlling the page in some way (e.g. iterating)
(2) accessing J2EE resources (e.g. EJBs)
(3) for generating HTML fragments (e.g. form controls)
I did a presentation at JavaOne last month called "Tags vs. JavaBeans". The slides for this can be downloaded from my website at http://www.simongbrown.com
Also, I am re-running this for the JSIG in London next week (27 July) - http://www.jsig.com
Cheers
Simon

Originally posted by Nick Kellett:
Hi Simon. Your book sounds great. Can I ask you: when writing JSP pages, at what point do you decide to use JavaBeans on the page or create your own custom tags (more effort)? What are some of the criteria you use for deciding when a custom tag is worth it?

------------------
Simon Brown
Co-author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Simon Brown]

Hi Emmanuel,
I'm not sure that I understand your question. Could you elaborate a little?
Thanks
Simon

Originally posted by Emmanuel Bakare:
Hi Simon ,
I am a beginner in Servlets and I got stuck while trying to
run the clients web page request to the server, I could not get
it to work. I have also downLoaded the Servlet class.
Please help.
Regards,
Emmanuel Bakare.
London

------------------
Simon Brown
Co-author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Simon Brown]

That's right ... they are the same.

Originally posted by erik weibust:
i have a question. what is the difference in getting the jsp/servlet api's from sun vs getting them with tomcat? aren't they the exact api's?
thanks,
erik

------------------
Simon Brown
Co-author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Simon Brown]

Hi,
I think that the Web Component Developer certification helps to fill a gap that currently exists. The CJP and CJD exams test your knowledge of the core Java APIs, whereas the new enterprise architect exam covers the whole of the J2EE, but from a higher level.
Although Servlets and JSPs are fairly straightforward themselves, there is so much more that can be done - especially when you start looking at the tags, the web application deployment descriptors, servlet mapping, filtering, security, requests/responses, MVC, etc.
Hopefully we'll see a Certified Enterprise JavaBean/Business Component Developer exam ... who knows!
Simon

Originally posted by Ricardo Polero:
Hi,
Would you tell your opinion of the new Sun Certification in JSP , etc
Thx in adv

------------------
Simon Brown
Co-author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[Simon Brown]

Thanks Michael!
... and we should also congratulate the technical reviewers and the team at Wrox that worked so hard to put the book together.
Cheers
Simon

Originally posted by Paul Michael Laborte:
congratulations to Simon and the rest of the Team!

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Simon Brown
Co-author of Professional JSP 2nd Edition

[P Subramanian]

Hi Brown,
What is the advantage in having servlets implementing the SingleThread Model interface?

[P Subramanian]

Hi brown,
The same can be achieved if the service method is synchronized. What is the purpose of using the Single Thread model then?