<pre>
Author/s : Duane K. Fields, Mark A. Kolb, Shawn Bayern
Publisher : Manning
Category : J2EE
Review by : Sean MacLean
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>
Having �field tested� the first edition of "Web Development with
Java Server Pages" on several projects, I was anxious to see what the authors had in
store with this second edition. I have to say that it was worth the wait, though
some new additions or lack there of, did give me pause. Foremost, it should be
noted that the original material remains intact and, based on this alone, the
second edition gets same hearty recommendation as before. However, a more basic
introduction has been added which, for me, changed the tone of the initial
chapters completely. Understandably, though, it does provide a "more gentle"
introduction for those new to the topic. As well, with so many similarities
between some of the books� architectures (see chapter 10) and several popular
presentation frameworks (i.e.
Struts), I was struck with the sense that these
should have been introduced as well. Most significantly, the book updates the
discussion to include
JSP 1.2 and
Servlets 2.3 throughout and includes chapters
covering Filters and Listeners. The discussion of filters alone garners this
edition an extra horseshoe with its excellent coverage of this topic
(personally, I feel that filters add potential for component re-use and
abstraction that has not existed in
J2EE applications to date). Finally, the
addition of a chapter on "non-html" content, though brief, is welcome for its
coverage of XML, Excel spreadsheets and code generation.
(Sean MacLean - Bartender, August 2002)
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