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Java servlet books: A comparative review

Find out where you can get the best servlet coverage

By John Zukowski, JavaWorld.com, 03/08/00

Lately, I'm often asked which books on Java servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) I would recommend. In fact, even when I was at a local bookstore recently someone asked me that. This month, I'll review five books that focus completely on servlets and four others that contain strong servlet content.

The five books with servlet-only content in this review are:

• Java Servlet Programming, by Jason Hunter with William Crawford
• Developing Java Servlets, by James Goodwill
• Inside Servlets: Server-Side Programming for the Java Platform, by Dustin R. Callaway
• Java Servlets by Example, by Alan R. Williamson
• Java Servlets, Second Edition, by Karl Moss

Table 1 below provides a quick review of the main characteristics of these servlet-specific books.

The following list explains the meaning of the last several rows in this table. The first group of rows, up to "CD-ROM/Source from FTP site," should be fairly self-explanatory.

• Servlets/JSP Versions: Indicates the latest versions of the APIs the book covers. The Servlets API versions include 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, and the latest, 2.2. The JSP API versions include 0.91 (and earlier), 0.92, 1.0, and the current 1.1 version.
• Sessions: Indicates the book's level of coverage on session management, cookies (the cookie class was added to the 2.0 API), as well as state management.
• Security: Indicates the book's level of coverage on such security topics as HTTP authentication and SSL with servlets.
• XML: Indicates the book's level of coverage on using the Extensible Markup Language (XML) with servlets.
• JDBC: Indicates the book's level of JDBC-servlet connectivity coverage, such as access and connection pooling
• Internationalization: Shows the coverage level for creating Websites that display localized output through servlets, such as date/message formatting, special character set encodings, and use of property files.
• API Reference: Shows whether or not the book includes the complete javax.servlet API documentation. An (A) indicates the reference is included in the appendix. A (D) indicates the reference includes long descriptions, and a (d) indicates short descriptions. An (E) indicates the use of examples within the API reference.
• Web Servers: Lists the specific Web servers given a reasonable level of coverage in the book; basically, coverage on how to add a servlet to the Web server is necessary to receive a rating higher than None.

The ranking scale for these topics is None, Poor, Average, Good, Very Good. An asterisk (*) in a field means the review of the specific book provides further details of the ranking.