Summary

Today's lesson on the first technology supported by WebLogic Server, Java servlets, has covered a lot of topics. The chapter began by discussing the need for Web-enabled applications, the initial technique of Web-enabling applications using CGI, and how the Java servlet technology overcomes the drawbacks of CGI. Then you briefly looked at WebLogic Server's support for the Java servlet technology, especially the Java Servlet API version 2.3 supported by WebLogic 7.0. After this, you studied important concepts regarding Java servlets, namely, the life cycle of a Java servlet, the core HTTP Servlet API, sessions, and session-handling techniques.

Prior to actually writing your own servlet, you looked at a flowchart of the steps involved in building a Java servlet correctly, from the requirements stage all the way to deploying the Java servlet in the WebLogic Server. The chapter concluded with the design and development of a sample BookShoppingServlet, which implemented each of the different session-handling techniques supported in WebLogic Server: hidden variables, URL rewriting, cookies, and the HttpSession API. The final and most important part of the process was to deploy the servlets using the different session techniques in WebLogic Server to clarify the required settings.

You are now ready to move on to learning advanced servlet concepts in WebLogic Server tomorrow!