<pre>
Author/s : Marty Hall, Larry Brown, Yaakov Chaikin
Publisher : Prentice Hall PTR
Category : Servlets, JSP and Tag Libraries
Review by : Jeanne Boyarsky
Rating : 7 horseshoes</pre>
"Core
Servlets and JavaServer Pages, Volume 2: Advanced Technologies" targets developers who already know
Java and basic servlets/JSPs. Note this book's second edition does not cover the latest technologies. It uses
J2EE 1.3/1.4 and
Struts 1.3.
The main topics are advanced deployment descriptor settings, security, custom tags, filters, event handling and JSTL. Then there are three very good chapters on Struts 1.3, although I'm not sure what they have to do with "core servlets." The browser screenshots were good for showing output and the examples were excellent.
As with "Core Java", the 700 page book contains some long classes. I could have done without the complete 5 page deployment descriptor at the end since it was gradually built up with new additions highlighted. Highlighting does help with spatial orientation.
I did notice a couple typos in the book. None of these affected the meaning, but it gives you the impression it wasn't proofread as carefully as other books. And (at least my copy) had a printing error where one page was missing a few lines.
The book mostly pointed out best practices. There were a few exceptions such as one chapter mentioning which
jsp page should establish a database connection. Different chapters had different opinions on whether there should be scriptlets in a JSP as well.
Overall the book was fine although I would prefer to invest in a different title -- either fully on Struts or fully on servlets/JSPs.
More info at Amazon.com More info at Amazon.co.uk