Java Server Pages, Second Edition by Hans Bergsten

[Book Review Team]

<pre>

Author/s : Hans Bergsten
Publisher : Oreilly
Category : J2EE and Distributed Computing
Review by : Ajith Kallambella
Rating : 7 horseshoes
</pre>
If you have read the first edition of this book, you will notice the difference.
More examples, lots of information of what has changed since then including JSP
1.2 spec changes and how the new technologies like XML and JSTL from Sun has
changed the way programmers work with JSP.

The book offers more than a quick JSP tutorial. The readers will be introduced
to "buddy" Java technologies like EJB, JDBC and of course plain Java servlets.
All the examples have been tried on Apache Tomcat. The author also talks about
web architecture and realizing the MVC pattern using JSPs. Naturally, you will
find jars and jars full of beans and custom tags.

Speaking of custom tags, the readers should expect to get lost wandering through
a plethora "ora" tags written by the author himself. It will make one wonder if
they just bought a custom tag book wrongly titled as a JSP guide!. The author
heavily relies on his own "ora" custom tag library to explain plain and standard
concepts such as JDBC instead of teaching the readers to write code from scratch
using Sun s JSP.

To summarize, this is a nice JSP book for beginners. But if you already know
JSPs and have been working with them for a while, be ready for a
<jsp:world-full-of-custom-tag> perspective, and take things with a pinch of
salt.


More info at Amazon.com
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[Book Review Team]

<pre>Author/s : Hans Bergsten
Publisher : O'Reilly
Category : Servlets, JSP and Tag Libraries
Review by : Valentin Crettaz
Rating : 9 horseshoes</pre>
JSP lovers, don't look further: this book is for you!! The third edition of JavaServer Pages by Hans Bergsten is not just an update of the second edition. It contains plenty of fresh material and covers the new JSP 2.0 and Java Standard Template Library 1.1 specifications. JSTL provides a significant number of ready-to-use JSP tags for accessing databases, internationalizing page contents and for manipulating variables, URLs and XML streams. Together, JSP and JSTL make it very easy to quickly develop dynamic and attractive web sites.
This book represents an excellent and complete resource that is beneficial not only to Java developers but also to non-programmers who may now participate in the creation of dynamic web pages and custom tag libraries by means of the so-called tag files without writing a single line of Java code. Several chapters contain great material for learning the JSP-related objectives of the new Sun Certified Web Component Developer certification exam (1.4).
Furthermore, the author goes beyond the honorable task of technically describing JSPs by providing deep insights as to how JSP, servlets and the Struts framework fit together into the J2EE big picture. He also presents advanced subjects, such as performance issues in database access, page caching, JSP precompilation, error handling and authentication.
Finally, the book provides many appendices among which you will find an exhaustive reference of JSTL actions and JSP elements (including the Expression Language) as well as the JSTL and JSP APIs.


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