Professional JSP: Using JavaServer Pages, Servlets, EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, XSLT, and WML to create dynamic and customizable web content - Softcover

This book explains the inner and outer workings of Java Enterprise Edition's Java Serverside Pages (JSP) as it relates to delivering dynamic Web content. Built on Java Servlets JSP enables Java programmers to produce dynamic Web pages in a manner similar to Microsoft's ASP. JSP has advantages over ASP. For example, it needs to be interpreted only once and runs on server platforms other than Windows.

Professional JSP is a big, dense and full of painstakingly precise technical detail with occasional short illustrative stories. For example; the frog in the well. The eponymous frog is the Java VM. The well is the hardware and OS supporting it. In the story the VM is convinced it has plenty of spare resources but, of course, it can't 'see' the OS on which it runs and thus doesn't realise the support OS has none. The result is a stalled JVM with no problems or errors reported.

No previous knowledge of Java is assumed, though some experience of server programming would help. JSP developers need to understand databases, server administration, HTML and any other technologies with which the servlets interact. In practice, some knowledge of Java is also useful as JSP builds extensively on other Java technologies, JNDI for directory access is one. The case studies demonstrate this well. The weather report example requires working with XLST and WML (for WAP) among other, non-Java, languages.

Considering all this, the section on debugging shows welcome realism, "For a number of different reasons debugging JSP isn't easy". Too right. The combination of new and changing JSP specifications with mutliple languages and technologies makes it hellish. Still, if you persevere with Professional JSP at least you'll be in with a chance. --Steve Patient

JSP is a dynamic web presentation. It is one of the most exciting server-side technologies in the Java 2 Enterprise Edition, currently in version 1.1. There are other template-based web page generation tools, so what makes JSP special? Three things:
1. JSPs are tightly integrated with J2EE, which provides support for all functionality you'd expect from an enterprise application.
2. JSPs are built on top of the Java Servlet framework, which enables very scalable and portable dynamic web sites. Servlets have wide support in the industry, and can run on all major web servers.
3. JSP 1.1 supports tag extensions that allow you to wrap an action as a simple-tag, reducing the coding necessary in the web page.