Rating:  - What you need to know about JSP and Servlet Programming.
This book presents a great introduction into the world of server side programming. Hall is an excellent writer and is considered to be the go-to man for JSP and Servlet development. This book is valuable to anyone interested in J2EE development.
Rating:  - Very good for the beginer to startup and can not get vol 2.
It is a very good for a beginner like me to catch all the basic knowlege in this area as fast as I could, without digging into the the advanced topic at the very begining. With the help of the book, I felt very exciting to be able to setup my own tomcat server and web.xml and develop and deploy my own JSP and servelt in MVC pattern without any help from other IDE like WSAD. The only pity I have that is that the book left all the advanced topics to vol 2, but I have feeling that the vol 2 will never be published. I did send a email to the author about the release date of the vol 2 but did not get response. I could not wait for vol 2, and I have to trun to other good book to fill up the gaps in my knowlege.
Rating: - Detail rich, high redundancy, super complete first volume on servlets and JSP
On most subjects you find at least one thick book. This book is more than the usual thick book on servlets and JSP. It is a really, really thick book. It took me quite a while to get used to reading it. All important points (and there are many of them) are explained a few times in a row. At the beginning I was somewhat annoyed, and then I started to realize that the repetition is due to the sound experience of the author with real people learning this technology. There are few things simple enough that no one can misunderstand a short explanation and sometimes it is oneself who misunderstands. So be prepared to read everything in extenso.
The book covers subjects you normally hear only little about. I found the treatment on HTTP (yes HTTP itself not only HTML) especially useful. You do even get introduced to three different servlet engines. As far as I am concerned two of those descriptions could have been moved to the appendix. Anyhow it is easy to skim through those pages. A lot of material will be covered in the second volume. The choice seems to be ok with the exception of JSTL. Here I wished it would have already been covered - at least at a basic level - in the first volume.
Who is the audience? Anybody who needs clarity on a specific point is well served. Anybody who wants to read a second book on the subject might also want to choose it. On the other hand this is clearly not a beginner's text. You get too early drowned in information and confused with too many options. Determined beginners could fight their way through, but to start with a good thin book is far more effective (I liked the excellent "Beginning JSP 2" from APress). Also if you have trouble skimming through large amounts of text and also if it is easy to insult your intelligence, you might want to read a different book.
In total I am happy with "Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages, Vol. 1" and keep looking forward to Volume 2, which I preordered already.
Rating: - Great Book
Great book, tells you in detail and in-depth on how Serviles and JSP work together. I wish I bought this book first so I would have saved a lot of money and time. I am looking forward to buying volume II.
Rating:  - DO NOT BUY!
Volume 1 (this book) was released a long long time ago and the advanced topics that were supposed to be covered in Volume 2 has never been addressed. Volume 2 has been delayed at least 4 times already - all after the editor's gleaming comments had been made! What does this say about the authors and publisher? What it tells me is you are not important. Why does it tell me that? Who has a project or an employer that will let you wait a year after learning the absolute basics ("Hello World!") before requiring that you be capable of something more? NONE! These authors and publisher have made it so that you now have to get the advanced topics somewhere else and just hope that the other author has written the book to compliment Volume 1 of this book from these authors. Not likely. They made me have to basically switch bridges in mid-stream. I do not know what their problem is but this is a sad sad way to do your customers. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! Find another author/publisher who has both an introductory book and an advanced book already published. It is an easy thing to find for 1.4.x of J2EE.
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