Murach's Java Servlets and JSP (Murach: Training & Reference)

I bought this book for a bit of self-study on a couple of isolated topics. It has turned out to be a well-indexed and well-organized reference book for bouncing around between topics, but also as an excellent sequential tutorial. At first, the book's size is a bit intimidating; however, it's style is for facing pages to re-enforce one another -- the left-hand page is a textual explanation while the right-hand page has figures, examples, and a summary to re-enforce what you read on the left-hand page. It works quite well.I'm a relative neophyte to Web servers, Servlets, and JSP; but have been programming professionally for over 45 years across a broad spectrum of software languages and technologies. This book contains plenty of detail; although a Servlet/JSP expert might say it stops short of maximum/full coverage. The only problems I have encountered are that the target is moving. So far, this book is closer to current than any of the others I've tried.I'm sufficiently happy to purchase more of Murach's books on other topics, and to recommend this one to anyone without hesitation.

Using this book and this book only I was able to wrap my mind entirely around the Servlets and JSP world.Servlets are Java classes which extend a specific class called HTTPServlet, and this book explains that in details. If that previous sentence just flew over your head (i.e. you are wondering what a Java class is, what does extending means and so on), you should not get this book yet, and focus on Java first. On the other end, JSPs are based on top of HTML, so it would be useful to have a working knowledge of HTML as well (though the book offers a quick intro on it).The book follows the typical Murach style (love it or hate it) with detailed explanations on the left, and summaries on the right page. Also the code seemed to work fine on my machine. It's also quite readable (keep in mind this is a technical book, so I'm speaking within that context). I'm 80% of the way through and I have learned a tremendous amount. We use Java at work and I was a newcomer to using Java for web applications, and I'm now able to see servlet-related exceptions and not freak out, know which class called what, what the error likely means, how to fix things up and just generally how this whole thing works. Life is really beautiful when you are a programmer not at the constant mercy of Google searches. JSPs are in a world of their own and I thought the coverage was excellent as well.Stepping back a little, I would add that Servlets and JSP are foundational technologies/tools that many Java frameworks, such as Spring MVC, build on top of. As a result it is very much possible to learn those frameworks without knowing Servlets and JSPs. However you will be running into errors ("javax.servlet.ServletExceptions...") in your stacktraces and you will generally feel lost in those. StackOverflow is cool, but it's not ideal to get the big picture. Also the book does an excellent job of covering files such as web.xml and the meaning of their tags, so that you are not lost figuring out what is happening. Doug Crockford (inventor of JSON) once told me (I was a student) that programmers vastly underestimate the time spent in the *abyss*. That world where you are trying to debug little stuff and you lose track of time, and end up thinking it took you less time to figure it out, while it actually took an eternity. Overall I think a solid architectural knowledge mixed with good details and examples (which this book does provide), pays great dividend in keeping you from descending into the abyss.Overall this book delivers its cost. Get it and be disciplined enough to go through it and stop and understand along the way. I think it's well worth it. I haven't found any other one that gives this good of a coverage of the title topic. If you do please let me know and I can amend this review.

This book serves as a brief introduction into Java Servlets and JSP. It's good for learning the basics but not enough for developing real web applications. For instance, it completely lacks info on Spring Framework and discusses JPA only briefly.

I don't usually write a review for anything I buy on here, but when I do, the product items are extremely good and satisfying. Alright, let me tell you, the author is very thoughtful (in my opinion) about what he said in the book meaning that, every time he showed a code example, he explained why he did it, also, what you should do and shouldn't do. The wording in the book is extremely clear and understandable, the author for sure assumed you have absolutely no knowledge about java servets and jsp, PLUS, he also explained other things in the Java EE suite like the new Persistence JPA API which is a very very convinient and easy way to work with databases as opposed to the old, low-level JDBC API, it is like when you started using color TV, you dont wanna switch to the old black-and-white at all, though, understanding JDBC will give you some ground for JPA, keep in mind though, the chapter on JPA is like an introduction, but a very very thorough one. The author also covered other things related to web programming such as JSF, SSL, cyber attacks, many many more. Alright, in short, this book is a must-get, if you are reluctant, I can guarantee that you will be very happy with your purchase, if you buy the book, and still dont understand what is going in the book, then I dont know what else you should buy, dont wanna be rude, but if you find the book difficult to follow, then you should stop learning Java EE to save you some sweat, I am a very slow person, but I am able to understand everything in the book very easily, so you will be too. Oh, by the way, I like the format the author chose, code example on one page, explanation on the other, that is very very very nice. I'm glad, I mean I am ecstatic that I bought the book, I am just looking forward to the author's new books on web programming in general and Java EE technologies suite specifically since I have been wanting to learn Java EE for a long time.DISCLAIMER, in my opinion, you should have a basic understanding of Java, that would help you tremendously, also basic knowledge of HTML, CSS(if you dont, no worries, the author did cover the basics to get you to a good start as well), basic knowledge of the SQL language for working with databases as well, the author did show you basic skills to work with databases such as the CRUD(Create - Read- Update - Delete) operations as well, but not that good in my opinion, but hey this book is focused on servelts and jsp, what do you expect?Alright, that was too much talking, just wanna thank the author for such an amazing book.

Me gustó el libro aunque está en ingles es muy entendible

This book has helped me with my coursework in uniI would recommend this author who does different languages in programming teaching method seems to work

Used it for my course. Well structured examples and content. Highly recommended to keep this book after a while.

Me gusto mucho como esta distribuido, como maneja los conceptos pero sobre todo como te lleva de la mano para comenzar a programar en estos lenguajes.

exactly what I expected and arrived in two days.