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JavaServer Pages, Second Edition Review by Thomas Paul
Nice introduction for web site designers
This book is geared for web site designers with no Java experience who are interested in understanding how to incorporate JSP into their web site. The book gives a good introduction to the basics that anyone doing web site development with Java will need to know. Although the book concentrates on incorporating JSPs into a web site it also includes enough information to allow the non-programmer to do some basic programming.
The first half of the book is a basic overview of JSP with a concentration on building dynamic pages by using JavaBeans, JSTL, and the expression language. Anyone who is familiar with ASP or ColdFusion will find this section very easy to follow. Each chapter has examples that help to make the information from the chapter easier to understand. All of the examples are on the included CD and ran without any problem in Tomcat. The second half of the book starts with a brief introduction to the Java programming language. The book then shows how to use Java to write your own JavaBeans. Servlets are discussed along with explaining what an MVC architecture is using Struts as an example. The second half ends by showing how to develop your own tag libraries.
The author has done a good job of explaining the basics of using JSPs but then he tries to cast too wide a net in the second half of the book. Each of the topics is covered too lightly (each topic could have its own book) and will tend to leave the inexperienced reader a bit lost. If you are a web designer and need to understand how to incorporate Java into your site then this book will be very helpful. Read the first part of the book in detail and just catch the major themes of the second half and you will be in good shape.