Job & Edu

Head First Servlets and JSP: Passing the Sun Certified Web Component Developer Exam

From O'Reilly Media

Binding : Paperback
DeweyDecimalNumber : 005.376
EAN : 9780596516680
Edition : 2
ISBN : 0596516681
Label : O'Reilly Media
Manufacturer : O'Reilly Media
NumberOfPages : 912
ProductTypeName : ABIS_BOOK
PublicationDate : 2008-03-25
Publisher : O'Reilly Media
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Customer Reviews

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on Servlets & JSP
Comment: The Head First series is like a seal of quality, its friendly approach and way of explaining concepts just show that. And Head First Servlets & JSP is no different.

The book is recommended for those who want to learn JEE (the web part), but if you have to have some background on Java, if you don't buy Head First Java first!

The book starts showing some concepts on the Internet, how servers work, pages and HTML. ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! They can make computers look much simpler and easy to learn.
Then, they show some simple web app. and explain it, then you'll see that this small app. got some problems (the HTML and Java code are mixed, making it painfully hard to maintain and understand) so they introduce other concepts like JSP, and they progress, showing that scriptlets in JSP are terrible too, so they present JSTL and so on. Even Enterprise Design Patterns are covered.

I found the book covers pretty well all the non-framework part of JEE, that is just Sun technology, no Struts, JSF, Hibernate, Spring, etc. But that's an excellent intro for Java Enterprise Edition. And of course, probably the best book for the Sun Certified Web Components Developer (SCWCD), with a lot of exercises in the last pages of each chapter. Every topic for the SCWCD is covered.

Definitely recommended!
Rating:
Summary: SCWCD
Comment: This book was very helpful for me, I passed the exam in the first time
Rating:
Summary: Only buy this book for exam prep.
Comment: The subtitle should be the title of this book. The book is 879 pages; the material could be covered in about 150. In several instances the authors state a topic isn't covered on the exam so it isn't covered in the book. Each chapter contains "Sharpen your pencil" and "Coffee Cram" exam type pages; The exams contain one copy of each page with the questions, and a duplicate page with the answers.

Only the core JSTL is covered. Formatting, SQL, and XML JSTL are mentioned; but only to inform the reader they are not covered on the exam.

No mention of using Servlets and JSP to create a database driven application. As a matter of fact, they don't really mention or give examples of any large applications. It's not on the exam.

The book contains plenty of whitespace and is well written if you enjoy a little levity with your learning. It's a shame the authors selected such a narrow topic.

After you finish the exam, you might as well sell the book. It's a terrible reference (remember each page of mock exam takes up 2 pages: 1 for the exam, 1 for the answers).

The signal to noise ratio of this book is too low to be useful.


Rating:
Summary: A joy to read
Comment: The writing style in this book makes it a joy to read. The book doesn't dive into complex Java frameworks and stays on topic pretty much, focusing on JSP. I think even if someone is not taking the Sun certification exam, it does a pretty good job introducing the different technologies in a very logical and evolutionary way by asking questions, giving lots of visual examples etc. If you are looking for a reference or a solution cookbook, this is not the one, but it does bring balance...
Rating:
Summary: Get Murach's Book Instead
Comment: Head First Servlets & JSP hardly lends itself as a resource to the working developer. Using JSP and Servlets for the past year, I initially purchased this book to support my primary job task, but was surely disappointed. The scattered and cartoon drawings throughout the book distract the reader from focusing on the core aspects of JSP and Servlets. Moreover, it lends little help for actually getting up and running with JSPs in a working environment. Rather it focuses on how to pass an exam, but even at this endeavor, the book is just too frivolous and distracting. I returned the book immediately and picked up a copy of Murach's JSP and Servlets instead. You will not be disappointed with Murach - he does everything that this book doesn't.