Shashank Ag

iText is basic api to generate pdf from java.
Now, if you are creating a report from db, I hope you must be using servlet/action etc in between where you can generate this pdf.
Also, which reporting api/tool are you using?

If none, try iReports its free and very easy.

I must say one who has interest in IT should only opt CS/IT.
But, thats not all. Being in IT means continuos learning, as far as, most of Reginal Engineering Colleges & Private Colleges are concerned the syllabus is not good enough.
But then its IT, everything is availble online and best part is only hardware you need to learn/experiment is a computer. So, if a student who is really interested in software should bother lot about programming and latest technologies instead of just syllabus.
I know what I am talking about is difficult but then if you can get par with it then only you will be outstanding candidate.

I myself completed SCJP while I was in B.Tech 3rd Yr. Besides a loooooooot more I learned (on my personal efforts) helped me to do wonders on JOB.

Now, to compare with some other branch like electronics or others, I tell you story of many of my collegues.
They graduated from very good engg. colleges with Electronics, joined big MNC like mine. They always feel the hard earned knowledge of Electronics (etc) is waste forthem now. Three years down the line, they are still confused weather to switch to there core branch or be in software, hence loosing the pace with every increasing technologies.

Bottom line, if you are confident that software is one thing which certainly interests you then just opt CS/IT and concentrate to be the best IT professional.

In my view #1 steals the show because it is only thing you can be absolutly shore of while switching a job.
Rest of #2-#8 can vary along with circumsatnces.
Say you change a job for some company which offers you development work but by the time you join either the Vacancy is filled or project is scrapped then they'll give you some other work.
Also, even if you get that work, it is not bound to continue like that lifelong (at least for software sector). Some way down the line you will change project and #2-#8 will vary along with that.

We are using a product of oracle called WebCache for such purposes. It does comprehensive caching by making cache of parts of web page.
Besides, the very basic idea of end user hitting a browser back button doesn't appeals much. I think there should be a back link/button on web page which should be used by end user. Also, upon this link you can actually do some caching via some logic in code.

see menus and navigation links are part of any portal server's page, you should look into how to customise themes and skins in correpondence to your portal solution.
I am sure you will find much easier and less messy way to do this.

i know you'll be sad reading this, but no struts 2 officially supports jsr 168 only.
But, you can use spring framework for jsr 286 support if you like to. The only drawback is you will be using Spring MVC which is bit cumbersome than struts 2 and has not much of any tag libraries.

You can also use <aop:pointcut/> tags in spring xml, but i'll advice to use them only if you can define some pattern over the join points.
say com.abc.*.Db*.u*(..) then it will work well.

Looking at stack trace it seems as if problem is due to some old version spring jars in your classpath.

Hence, They way it can be done is via session. But otherways like threadlocale could be thought of based onwhat requirement you have.
However, threadlocale solution will still be depedent upon some session value only.

See in a basic servlet api there are 3 main scopes, request, session and application (ServletContext).
Struts "ActionContext" getContextMap/parameter gives a copy of context-params specified in web.xml.
These values are ment to be readonly once application is deployed, as per servlet api.

Hence, it did not worked out. And yes its a bug in Struts that ActionContext.getContextMap gives you a Map instance which is modifiable.

actually you don't initialize value attribute of <s:file /> tag.
It is because the value determines the file path on clients system which is never sent to you.
Even if somehow you know it, even then what happens if file was removed from that location.

Hence, if you will need a work around to this by displaying list of uploaded files upon page.

Just elaborating Bear here for jsp includes approach:
First write a jsp file for header say header.jsp placed in folder "head"
Now in all other jsp files use:

<jsp:include file="/head/hearder.jsp" />

The jsp:include will be simply replaced by contents of header.jsp at runtime.

For starters you can use bottom up approach, so just write a method which accepts string argument (containing xml) and do thedb updates as you require.
Now, to generate webservice out of it, there are sevreral java2wsdl generators. Axis is one of it (easier) although JAX-WS will be better choice in terms of adheraing to latest standards.

Inter Portlet Communication (IPC) is handeled via portlet events as per JSR286 spec.Which spec are you using?

It always comes down to how much resources you have on server jvm (RAM).
J2EE does not have any limit of session size.