Professional JSP : Using JavaServer Pages, Servlets, EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, XSLT, and WML

Professional JavaServer Pages covers a wide variety of areas including design and architecture, JSPs and their relation to J2EE (Servlets, EJBs, JDBC etc) as well as extensive coverage of the tag extension mechanism that allows you to customize the tags you use in your pages to the data you're presenting.

Readers are given an introduction to JSP, explaining how they relate to servlets, showing the tags, and creating beans to encapsulate business logic, to keep web page design simple. Further chapters cover database access with JDBC and connection pooling, JSP debugging, and web application architecture using JSP and servlets.

After considering security issues in JSP web applications, the book concludes with seven real-world case studies including using JSP, XML and XSLT to target content at WAP and HTML browsers, e-commerce, streaming using JMF, and porting an existing ASP-based application to JSP. Appendices give programming refreshers on installing the Tomcat JSP/Servlet engine, detailed references to JSP, the Servlet API, and HTTP, and finally JSP for ASP programmers.

This book is for both professional Java developers, who want to use JSP as the front-end of their J2EE web applications, and web designers, who want to see how JSP separates presentation from dynamic content generation. Although no knowledge of Java is assumed, reference will be made to a quick start Java tutorial at wrox.com and to other materials for some topics. Knowledge of HTML and some programming experience is required.

For readers with some previous Java experience, Professional JSP is a comprehensive guide to today's JavaServer Pages (JSPs). Besides a solid tutorial on JSPs and servlets, this book gives you lots of useful examples of how JSPs can work with other Java APIs (like EJBs and XML) to deliver highly functional Web sites.

Professional JSP shows the underlying servlet code for many JSP samples. As explained by the authors, JSPs are a simpler way to write servlet code because Java statements are embedded within HTML. This fact makes the book especially useful to programmers who know about servlets and want to progress to JSP development. The introductory tutorial to JSP is as good as any you'll ever see. Short examples illustrate basic JSP features like directives, scripting elements, implicit objects, and JavaBeans. The book also reveals a variety of ways to track session information (including cookies), which is particularly helpful.

Several case studies show key concepts in action, including how to use custom tag libraries. Nicely functional samples include a Web site for an online investment company, a photography database, and a membership-based online grocery store. (This last example shows how to use LDAP and JNDI to store user information.) In addition to a thorough tutorial for learning JSPs, chapters in this text look at combining EJBs, XML, and other Java 2 Enterprise features that you'll need for successful real-world development. Handy appendices detail how to install and configure the free Apache Web Server and Tomcat JSP engine. There's also a reference to all JSP and servlet objects and APIs.

Overall, you'll mine plenty from Professional JSP, including several extremely useful coding examples that'll get you going on serious development for real-world e-commerce Web sites. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

Introduction to Java 2 Enterprise Edition and JavaServer Pages (JSP) JSP, CGI, and ASP compared The JSP life cycle JSP directives, scripting elements, standard actions, and implicit objects Servlet architecture and APIs Using JavaBeans with JSPs JDBC database programming basics Using the PoolMan database connection pool manager Storing session state with hidden fields, cookies, and URL rewriting Error handling and debugging with JSPs

Tag extensions and tag libraries Personalizing look-and-feel and content with JSPs Global settings JSP architecture Security and personalization with JNDI and LDAP Introduction to Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) HTTP streaming with JSPs Basics of the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) Wireless Markup Language (WML) XML and XSLT Case studies on e-commerce and Web-site personalization