Chapter

n early 1996, I started using the Java programming language for the

majority of my software development work. I did some CGI program 

I

ming and even worked a little with the early servlet versions, but for the

most part I did desktop and client side applications. Over the last couple of

years, however, there has been a growing emphasis on server side applications,

so I became more serious about servlets and JavaServer Pages. In the past year,

there has been a virtual stampede toward the technology among developers,

server vendors, and the authors of the Java platform specifications. So much so,

in fact, that the technology is rapidly becoming the standard tool for building

dynamic Web sites and connecting Web front ends to databases and applica 

tions on a server.

Unfortunately, however, it was extremely difficult to find good practical

advice on servlet and JSP development. I found a number of servlet books, but

only a handful of them covered recent versions of the specification, advanced

techniques, or reflected real world experience. The few that did, if they cov 

ered JSP at all, hadn't caught up to JSP 1.0, let alone JSP 1.1. Since JSP is a bet 

ter fit than servlets for many situations, what good was a servlet book that didn't

also cover JSP? In the last couple of months, some JSP books have started com 

ing out. But the bulk of them don't cover servlets. What good is that? Since an

integral part of JavaServer Pages is the use of scripting elements to create serv 

let code, you can't do effective JSP development without a thorough under 

standing of servlets. Besides, most real world sites don't use just one of the two

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