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Which JSP book serves up the best lesson?

Choosing the best resource for learning JavaServer Pages

By John Zukowski, JavaWorld.com, 09/29/00

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Are you looking for that JavaServer Pages book that will get you started creating JSP-based Websites? In this article, I'll look at six of the latest JSP books offered. Those books include:

  1. Pure JSP: Java Server Pagesby James Goodwill (Sams, 2000)
  2. JavaServer Pagesby Larne Pekowsky (Addison-Wesley, 2000)
  3. Instant JavaServer Pagesby Paul Tremblett (Osborne McGraw-Hill, 2000)
  4. Web Development with JavaServer Pagesby Duane K. Fields and Mark A. Kolb (Manning Publications, 2000)
  5. Core Servlets and JavaServer Pagesby Marty Hall (Prentice Hall, 2000)
  6. Professional JSPby Dan Malks, et al. (Wrox Press, 2000)


Table 1 below provides a quick overview of the main characteristics of the reviewed books. I will go into more detail, reviewing each book individually, later in the article.

Table 1: JSP Books Overview
Pure JSP JavaServer Pages Instant JavaServer Pages Web Development with JavaServer Pages Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages Professional JSP
Price 4.99 9.95 9.99 4.95 2.99 9.99
Total Pages 325 300 510 560 580 900
CD-ROM/Source from Web No / No Yes / No Yes / Yes No / Yes No / Yes No / Yes
Authors 1 1 1 2 1 21
Servlets/JSP Versions 2.2 / 1.1 2.2 / 1.1 2.1 / 1.0 2.2 / 1.1 2.2 / 1.1 2.2 / 1.1
JavaBeans Average Average Average Very Good Average Average
JDBC Good Good Good Very Good Good* Good
Tag Extensions None Poor Poor* Very Good Good Good
XML Average Poor Poor Poor None Good
J2EE None None None Average None Good
Shopping Cart Average Average Good None Average Average
API Reference Very Good None Very Good Average None* Very Good
Web Servers / Databases Tomcat PostgreSQL Apache, JServ, PostgreSQL Tomcat Tomcat, JSWDK, Java Web Server Apache, Tomcat
Scale: None Poor Average Good Very Good
A star (*) in a field means this review provides further details of the ranking.


The first group of rows in Table 1, up to Authors, should be fairly self-explanatory. The subsequent rows indicate the version or level of coverage that the books offer for each category. Here are some things to note:

  • The Servlets API has gone from 1.0 to 2.0 to 2.1 and is now up to 2.2. The JSP API has gone from 0.91 (and earlier) to 0.92 to 1.0 to the current 1.1 version. Almost all the books cover the latest API version.
  • For JavaBeans-JSP page connectivity coverage, I was primarily looking for use with jsp:useBean.
  • The J2EE coverage is besides servlets, JDBC, and XML coverage.
  • The API Reference shows the book's coverage of the javax.servlet.jsp(and possibly javax.servlet) API documentation. Personally, I have never needed to look at the javax.servlet.jsp API reference. For clarity, I should mention the API reference is not the list of implicit objects and JSP directives. I mean API documentation on the JspEngineInfo and JspFactoryclasses.
  • As for Web servers/databases, just mentioning a server in the book is not sufficient to be listed here. Basically, instruction on how to configure the Web server or add a JSP file/Web application to the Web server is necessary and/or how to set up/use the database server.


Before starting the reviews, one thing I should mention is that I am the author of one chapter in Professional JSP (Wrox Press). Given the small contribution I made to Professional JSP, I feel I can still give an objective overview of that book and the others. Since it is clearly not my favorite book, I hope you can feel the same.

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