The Container used in the book

[Ko Ko Naing]

Hi Jayson Falkner or Kevin R Jones,
I would like to know which web container is basically used in the book to test the code... Is it Tomcat 5? I think Tomcat is the first web container to support JSP 2.0 and Servlet 2.4...
Thank you...

[Mcgill Smith]

yes tomcat 5 is used.

[Ko Ko Naing]

Hi Mcgill,
Is there any other container that supports those new specs in the current market now? As far as I know, only Tomcat 5 supports them for now... Isn't it?

[Vad Fogel]

Hi, Jason or Kevin!
I wonder to what extent you've covered the use of EJB in your book and what type of EJB container (if at all) was used.
Thanks.

[Ko Ko Naing]

Hi Vad Fogel,
I think EJB is not covered in the book, as far as I see in the TOC of the book... And the title of the book states only Servlets and JavaServer Pages; the J2EE Web Tier , which means that only web components are covered and business components are not... But I guess there may be some words talking about the connection between Presentation Tier and Business Tier...

[Vad Fogel]

It looks like you're right, Ko Ko... EJB is not interwoven in the book's contents. But I just learned it could be of great help preparing for the updated SCWCD exam specs wise!

[Frank Carver]

Resin 3.0 has been supporting servlets 2.4 and JSP 2.0 in a real release for months, and Tomcat 5 has only had a "stable" release since January 22, 2004.
So it is not true that Tomcat 5 is the only, or even the first container to support servlets 2.4 and JSP 2.0.

[Kevin Jones]

We use Tomcat 5.0. (5.0.16 was release in November, this was the first stable release of Tomcat 5)
Don't know what other Servers support the current specs,s omebody mentioned Resin and I'm sure Jetty is not far behind
EJB is Evil!

[Jeroen Wenting]

Resin 3 has been supporting the beta JSP2 and servlet 2.4 specs for months, but so has Tomcat.
Resin and Tomcat both have been continuously updated to reflect changes in the specs, where Apache have only started calling Tomcat 5 stable after the specs were officially released while Caucho did the same with Resin earlier (at the risk that they'd have to change an official release version for last minute changes in the supported technology).

[Jayson Falkner]

I just wanted to tack on my +1 for Kevin's "EJB is evil!" comment. EJB use is not covered in the book for a few reasons, the primary reason is that both Kevin and I don't think EJB is something you shouldn't always use, and we try to get this point across in the book. The other big reason is that we tried to keep this book's focus narrowly targeted on building web applications with Servlets and JavaServer Pages and JDBC should you need a database. You can do a lot with just those API, and we tried to illustrate just about all of the important JSP/Servlet concepts with enough JDBC mixed in to be practical. If you need to learn Java or you need to use EJB, this book probably isn't good for you, but if you are using Servlets, JavaServer Pages, or both, you should be very pleased with our treatment of the topics.

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Jayson Falkner:
The other big reason is that we tried to keep this book's focus narrowly targeted on building web applications with Servlets and JavaServer Pages and JDBC should you need a database. You can do a lot with just those API, and we tried to illustrate just about all of the important JSP/Servlet concepts with enough JDBC mixed in to be practical.

Mr.Jayson,
Which database is typicall used in the book to connect with the web application developed in the book? Probably MySQL or MS Access? When dealing with JDBC API, does the book discuss about the drivers used to connect to various databases?
Thank you for ur reply...

[Kevin Jones]

We use MySQL but the code used would be valid for any other database access. One thing that you need to realise though is that the database access code used in the book is very basic and would not be the best for use in a production environemnt.
If you want to know more about JDBC drivers check this out

[Ko Ko Naing]

Thank you very much for ur reply, Mr.Kevin... Especially about the link u provided about JDBC..... I hope that ur book will continue to be successful in thre future... Actually I've already skimmed through all three chapters of the book... The explanation is really good and clear...