This weeks giveaway

[Carl Trusiak]

This wee we are giving away four copies of the book "Java Servlets Developer's Guide".
And the best part... The Author, Karl Moss, will be online to answer your questions!
Everyone give Karl a warm JavaRanch Welcome.
"I started this book with a very basic understanding of Servlets. A good book increases your knowledge of a subject without boring you to tears. This book does that...." Bartender Paul Stevens
Read the rest of the review in the BunkHouse
Thanks to the people at Osborne/McGraw-Hill for the book's!
[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Carl Trusiak ]

[Paul Stevens]

Welcome Karl. I really enjoyed your book.

[Matthew Phillips]

Welcome Karl. I hope you enjoy the conversation here. I have a question about your book. There are many servlet books on the market. What would you say makes the right choice to learn this technology?

[Michael Piscatello]

Karl,
Two questions, I have just about every servlet book on the market. How is your book different? the same? I appologize that I have not make a trip to the bookstore to check it out. And 2nd, how do you feel about struts? I am investing a lot of time one learning it and making it part of my company's projects. As a servlet guru, what do you think?
Thanks!
Michael Piscatello
SCJP

[Ruilin Yang]

Karl,
Welcome here. I would like you to summarize the new feature of the latest servlet version (2.3 ?)compared with 2.2 specification.
regards,
Ruilin
SCJP2, SCJD2, SCEAJ2

[Rowan Chattaway]

Karl,
There seems to be lots of servlet/j2ee technology books on the market, of which I have a few, but there doesn't seem to be any web-component certification books available......gab in the market!? I'm sure your book is very good, but why would someone buy yours over the many other choices available!?(This is not a critisism, I'm simply curious). I'm currently studying for my Web-component exam, and although my job involves j2ee development, there are some elements of the j2ee technology that I do not use regulary and therefore need a study book for my exam. Would you recommend yours?
Rowan.
ps - sorry for such a long( and probably badly worded) post!.

[Karl Moss]

Originally posted by Paul Stevens:
Welcome Karl. I really enjoyed your book.

Thanks! This is my first time on the Ranch, so I hope you seasoned rancher dudes take it easy on this greenback...

[Karl Moss]

Originally posted by Matthew Phillips:
Welcome Karl. I hope you enjoy the conversation here. I have a question about your book. There are many servlet books on the market. What would you say makes the right choice to learn this technology?

The focus of my book is using the servlet API to solve problems. There are many books out there covering the API in detail, but may be lacking in real-world applications. Java Servlets Developer's Guide (JSDG) contains lots of interesting applications and hits all of the commonly used areas of the servlet API (plus some of the lesser used). Here's the table of contents:
Chapter 1 Servlet Architecture and Environment
Chapter 2 Servlet Development
Chapter 3 Session Management
Chapter 4 Security
Chapter 5 Web Applications
Chapter 6 Filters
Chapter 7 Application Event Listeners
Chapter 8 HTML Forms
Chapter 9 Using JDBC in Servlets
Chapter 10 Applet to Servlet Communication
Chapter 11 Automating Applet to Servlet Programming
Chapter 12 J2ME to Servlet Communication
Chapter 13 Generating WML for Wireless Devices
Chapter 14 Sending Mail from Servlets
Chapter 15 Using Servlets and Native Code
Chapter 16 Performance Tips and Tricks
Appendix A The Servlet API
Appendix B The Web Application Deployment Descriptor
Appendix C On-line Servlet Resources
Chapter 6 & 13 are available in PDF form from www.servletguru.com if you'd like to take a peek. All of the source code from the book is also available there.
While JSDG is a follow-up to my "Java Servlets" book (which was the very first servlet book on the market), there's lots of new material.

[Gerry Giese]

Karl,
A few questions:
1) Is it rational to talk about Servlets and not spend a chapter talking about JSPS, templating engines, XML/XSLT, and Model 1/2 MVC patterns to separate UI/logic/data? On another thread there was a discussion as to why anyone would want to develop a Servlets-only website, and it looks like your book is focused on servlets only.
2) Are filters really all that useful in new webapp development? Are they very efficient in terms of performance, or would a framework approach be a better solution in many cases?
3) What types of performance tips/tricks do you cover in chapter 16? Is it a long chapter?

[Doug Wang]

Karl,
Seems that your book is more like essays on Servlets, right?
You say this book contains real-world applications. Do these applications form a big application or they are not related to each other?
Regards,
Doug.
[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Doug Wang ]

[Jim Petersen]

Originally posted by Rowan Chattaway:
I'm currently studying for my Web-component exam ... and therefore need a study book for my exam.

Hi all sorry for taking this off thread (especially to Karl who has given up his time to answer some question here) but for Rowan pls check this thread...
https://coderanch.com/t/165343/java-Web-Component-SCWCD/certification/It-was-only-matter-time
once again apologies

[Jim Petersen]

Originally posted by Karl Moss:

...and hits all of the commonly used areas of the servlet API (plus some of the lesser used

Hi Karl could you give us some hints as to the lesser part of the Servlet API you investigate in your book. I'm always interested in finding out new techniques with less well known elements of the Servlet API
rgds

[Ren Li]

Hi Karl,
I know that we may use JSP or a combination of JSP and Servlet to build a large web application. Could we use Servlet only to do so. Is it possible that Servlet will be replaced by JSP in the future?
Thanks.
Ren

[Rob Hunter]

Hi Karl,
Nice to meet you. Im more of a Perl/ Visual Basic/ etc.., etc.., programmer and Im really not too familiar with programming using servlets. I was wondering if you could explain where they could be used in an application's point of view. I've created JSP pages and have written some Java applets (most of which are small, limited in ability, and basically made in my spare time in regards to the applets) and I was curious on how servlets would help benefit any applications I might write in the future and how I would incorporate them into any application (requirements, etc..,).
Rob Pike

[Prashanth menon]

Hi Karl
What about JSP, XML etc.. Real world applications MVC may contain one or more of these too. Do you plan to write another book to cover these?
regards
Prashanth

[Ruilin Yang]

Karl,
Sometimes using servlet to call a applet is useful. In particular to generate a graph with applet. in this case we need to pass some parameters (or even a big array) to the applet and let applet to display the graph.
Does your book have comprehensive coverage on the communication between servlet and applet? Could you elaborate on this ?
Thanks
Ruilin
[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Rulin Yang ]

[Mike Cunningham]

Karl,
You mentioned that your book has lots of real world examples....which sounds good to me. However, it's a pain to type in examples verbatim (even though we learn that way sometimes). Does your book come with a CD that has the example code?
- Mike Cunningham

[Karl Moss]

Originally posted by Gerry Giese:
Karl,
A few questions:
1) Is it rational to talk about Servlets and not spend a chapter talking about JSPS, templating engines, XML/XSLT, and Model 1/2 MVC patterns to separate UI/logic/data? On another thread there was a discussion as to why anyone would want to develop a Servlets-only website, and it looks like your book is focused on servlets only.
2) Are filters really all that useful in new webapp development? Are they very efficient in terms of performance, or would a framework approach be a better solution in many cases?
3) What types of performance tips/tricks do you cover in chapter 16? Is it a long chapter?

1) I do mention JSP's and templating engines, but there are entire books devoted to these subjects alone. I also have two examples (one in the filters chapter and one in the wireless chapter) of how to generate XML and use XSLT to transform the raw XML into something useful for the particular type of client (user agent) making the request. There are lots of sites out there using servlets only, although many also use JSP in conjunction. Many people believe that JSP is evil (I'm not one of them).
2) Filters do seem to be very popular. I was suprised at JavaOne this year at the amount of talk regarding filters (the intro to filters session was closed 5 minutes early because it was full). Filters can be quite efficient (you are simply inserting your own code on the stack), especially when compared with using a RequestDispatcher to create your own chain. I certiainly wouldn't say that filters would always be better that a generic framework - depends upon your application.
3) Chapter 16 (peformance tips and tricks) is not long, but covers things like avoiding string concatenation, avoiding synchronization, using connection pools and prepared statements, caching, etc.

[Karl Moss]

Originally posted by Doug Wang:
Karl,
Seems that your book is more like essays on Servlets, right?
You say this book contains real-world applications. Do these applications form a big application or they are not related to each other?
Regards,
Doug.
[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Doug Wang ]

Each chapter develops an application using the topic in question, but there are a few cases where the application is built upon over several chapters.

[Karl Moss]

Originally posted by Rulin Yang:
Karl,
Sometimes using servlet to call a applet is useful. In particular to generate a graph with applet. in this case we need to pass some parameters (or even a big array) to the applet and let applet to display the graph.
Does your book have comprehensive coverage on the communication between servlet and applet? Could you elaborate on this ?
Thanks
Ruilin
[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Rulin Yang ]

Yes, the book does have a lot of coverage regarding applet to servlet communication (as well as J2ME to servlet communication). In chapter 10 I cover the basics of how to use both DataInput/DataOutput to read/write data as well as how to use Serialization (more overhead, but less complicated). In chapter 11 I take these concepts to the next level and show a general purpose code generator that will automatically generate the client side proxies and server side stubs necessary to make this work (much like RMI).

[Karl Moss]

Originally posted by Mike Cunningham:
Karl,
You mentioned that your book has lots of real world examples....which sounds good to me. However, it's a pain to type in examples verbatim (even though we learn that way sometimes). Does your book come with a CD that has the example code?
- Mike Cunningham

All code can be found on http://www.servletguru.com

[Rob Hunter]

Hi Karl,
I realize questions are coming in quick and all. I was just wondering if you only have so much time to answer all the questions being asked or if you planned on answering them all. Just wondering so as I won't waste any more of your time asking more generalized questions. Thanks.
Rob

[Karl Moss]

Rob,
Sorry, I do only have a limited amount of time to respond to questions. Lots of reasons, but I won't bore you with the details. If you have a burning question that you really want answered, feel free to email me directly ([email protected]).

[Sophia Choi]

Welcome Karl,
I have read a number of books about JSP and Servlet. But they don't mention about reporting in server side or client side. Would you like to give us some tips to deal with large amount of recordsets and to report them in PDF, Words or others?

[Karl Moss]

There are quite a few packages out there that provide help in generating content from database queries (whether it be graphs, pdfs, Flash, etc.). One of the oldest is the ACME Gif encoder (www.acme.com). If you have some cash to burn, you can also check out ReportMill (www.reportmill.com) - very nice stuff. I'm sure there are lots of other packages/resources out there as well, some of which are probably open source or share/free ware.

[Ruilin Yang]

Carl,
Does your book discuss anything about web-services, such as Soap, xml-rpc, etc.
thanks
Ruilin

[Michael Ku]

Do you have any examples of applet-servlet communication using server-side sessions. I have done this using encodeURL (this will append the jsession ID in the return from the servlet), but it is tedious. Is there a better way of doing this?

[Karl Moss]

1) Web services? No, this is not a topic I cover in the book
2) Using sessions with applet to servlet communication? Yes, I show how you can maintain your own cookies in your client (applet) code to preserve the session ID. This technique can also be used in a stand-alone application or servlet as well.

[Ruilin Yang]

Karl
Thanks
Ruilin

[Ruilin Yang]

I embedded applets into my JSP (servlet) pages. It works fine. In this way the session ID is taken care as usual by servlets. I used doGet to deal with embedded applet. It works fine for me.
Ruilin

[Carol Murphy]

Hey Karl, I don't want to correct you, but you are a greenhorn, not a greenback! I am struggling with the cattle drive assignments that involve servlets, and I am in serious need of a book. Online tutorials just don't seem to be my cup of tea. Would your book be a good intro to servlets in general, or is it geared more towards someone who has a bit of a clue? ( Read, is the language really technical or can a beginner understand it without a translator? )
P.S. I hope I win a copy anyway!

[Karl Moss]

The book assumes that you have some experience in Java (it is not an intro to Java book by any means), but does start with an introduction to Servlets and provides some background as to how/why the Servlet API came into being. The book quickly gathers up steam and walks through what is necessary to start developing servlets (using Tomcat) and how to create your first simple servlet (how to compile, deploy, etc.). After that it's into the meat of the API with chapters describing session management, security, web apps, and listeners. Then on to applications using servlets including applet to servlet communication, J2ME to servlet communication, wireless devices, JavaMail, and native code.
Hope this helps.

[Victor Htet]

Hi Karl,
I haven't had a chance to check out your book. I just would like to know you book has any topic regarding deploying distributable web application. <distributable/> tag in web.xml.
Because there are some do and don't for distributed web applications, it would be great if you mention that.
Also, any topic on Servlet handling XML-RPC requests???
Regards,