Audience | Java Servlet Programming (Java Series)

Java Servlet Programming, 2nd Edition > Preface > Audience

< BACK

CONTINUE >

Is this book for you? It is if you're interested in developing applications to be deployed on the Web. Specifically, this book was written to help:

J2EE programmers: Servlets are an integral part of the Java 2, Enterprise Edition, standard. Programmers developing for J2EE servers can learn how best to integrate servlets into other backend technologies.
JSP programmers: JavaServer Pages (JSP) are built on top of servlets. To take full advantage of JSP requires an understanding of servlets, which this book provides. This book also includes a tutorial on JSP as well as the four leading alternatives to JSP.
Java applet programmers: It has always been difficult for an applet to talk to a server. Servlets make it easier by giving the applet an easy-to-connect-to, Java-based agent on the server.
CGI programmers: CGI is a popular method of extending the functionality of a web server. Servlets provide an elegant, efficient alternative.
Other server-side programmers: There are many CGI alternatives including FastCGI, PHP, NSAPI, WAI, ISAPI, ASP, and now ASP+. Each of these has limitations regarding portability, security, performance, and/or integration with backend data sources. Servlets tend to excel in each of these areas.

What You Need to Know

When we first started writing this book, we found to our surprise that one of the hardest things was determining what to assume about you, the reader. Are you familiar with Java? Have you done CGI or other web application programming before? Or are you getting your feet wet with servlets? Do you understand HTTP and HTML, or do those abbreviations seem perfectly interchangeable? No matter what experience level we imagined, it was sure to be too simplistic for some and too advanced for others.

In the end, this book was written with the notion that it should contain predominantly original material: it could leave out exhaustive descriptions of topics and concepts that are well described online or in other books. Scattered throughout the text, you'll find several references to these external sources of information.

Of course, external references only get you so far. This book expects you are comfortable with the Java programming language and basic object-oriented programming techniques. If you are coming to servlets from another language, we suggest you prepare yourself by reading a book on general Java programming, such as Learning Java, by Patrick Niemeyer and Jonathan Knudsen (O'Reilly). You may want to skim quickly the sections on applets and Swing (graphical) programming and spend extra time on network and multithreaded programming. If you want to get started with servlets right away and learn Java as you go, we suggest you read this book with a copy of Java in a Nutshell, by David Flanagan (O'Reilly), or another Java reference book at your side.

This book does not assume you have extensive experience with web programming, HTTP, and HTML. But neither does it provide a full introduction to or exhaustive description of these technologies. We'll cover the basics necessary for effective servlet development and leave the finer points (such as a complete list of HTML tags and HTTP 1.1 headers) to other sources.

< BACK

CONTINUE >

2001, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.