Rating:  - Awesome
Book is very good you have to get use to this kind of book. It is different from others. It gets to the point.
Rating:  - Frustrating - 800 pages for 50 pages of info
This book is the exact opposite of what you want for a certificate book. The presentation of the material is story-based, meaning that instead of giving a simple fact, it gives a whole back story and then casually mentions the "punch-line". This makes this book 90% useless. Don't take my word for it, if you have access to the book, go to page: 550 to 565. There is no new information there. In fact the punchline can be summarized in a sentence. "Tags can have dynamic attributes, there must be a dynamic attribute in the TLD file, there is a function called setDynamicAttributes()". And a small example would help. That's it. About a quarter of a page of material takes 15 pages to present. Sometimes these punchlines are not even well explained at all. Stories, pictures, and the rest of this cutesy stuff is clutter.
I just took the SCJP (with Bates, Sierra book), and if I have to learn everything I did back then in this type of cutesy style, I'd have to read a 4000 page book. If you are the type of person that needs a long story and happy little pictures to learn simple facts, then you will have a horrible time as a programmer. In fact, the target audience, people who passed the SCJP, should find this style frustratingly slow and useless.
What's worse? The information is spread hap-hazardly and there are no end of chapter summaries. They sometimes have "bullet points", but those are randomly placed and sparingly used. This makes it an absolutely worthless reference book - especially in a test where it's so granular that you need to memorize what XML tags are in the web.xml file. There are many, many other problems with this book. It's 800 pages, and still doesn't have all the information needed. For example, I saw some functions that I never saw before in the book (setSecure in cookie). Also, there is no electric copy of the examples presented. Multiple authors have left their footprint everywhere, making it feel disjointed and long-winded. It's over 900 pages and soft cover, making it a physical pain to use and carry. The picture on the cover is so annoying that it's actually quite embarrasing to carry around at work. The mock exam is much harder than the real thing and will not give you an accurate prediction of how you will do in the real test.
In terms of the target audience, I think my profile is similar to many people reading this. I passed the SCJP recently. I know Java, and programmed in it for a while, but wasn't really experienced at all with Servlets and JSPs. Even though I'm a full-time developer, I don't use Servlets or JSPs, so my work wasn't going to add anything to my knowledge.
My suggestion - if you have this book, here's how to use it: DON'T READ IT AS A NORMAL BOOK. Nothing sticks, it sucks your time, and makes everything seem harder and more complicated that it really is. Read the headers, write the examples that are presented, and get the basic feel - an hour and a half per chapter max - that's it.. Ignore all the exercises as well. Afterwards, go to javaranch.com and get SCWCD notes and mock exams and use that as a your main learning tool. Why am I suggesting this is? I read half the book, and then just skimmed the other half, and I scored higher on the chapters that I skimmed through instead of read. In fact, you don't even need the book, as you can get the same mock exam online through a link on javaranch.com
So, in theory, if you can read 800 pages and be able to remember random, near hidden points here and there without every referring back to the book, then this book is perfect for you to get around 80% on the test. I'm going to assume that this is not you, and I hope you explore some other books or try the method I suggested above. The SCWCD is a very easy exam covering a small subset of J2EE (if it wasn't easy, JSP and Servlets wouldn't be used at all in the real world)- don't make it overly complicated and boring. The SCWCD was my second Sun certified test, and I just passed it today. I spent about 40 hours studying for it, and if I used a better book, I bet I could have cut 10 valuable hours off of it.
Rating:  - Good Surprise on Delivery by Amazon
I ordered for 'Head First Servlets & JSP' which shows 2004 edition on web-site. But much to my Surprise, I got March 2008 (2nd Edition) of the Book which is the latest version for the SCWCD 1.5 exam. Thanks to Amazon for giving the best.
-Sandeep Parmar
Rating: - Not only for SCWCD
Looking for some good material to revise/learn JSP technology?
Having an impression that each book is similar to the previous one?
Want to pass SCWCD exam?
When you answered `yes' at least twice, I think that you shall definitely read Head First SCWCD by Bryan Basham, Bert Bates and Kathie Sierra.
The most important difference between this book and all the rest is the way how authors describe technical issues. Don't consider them easy - they are really tricky sometimes.
It is a very funny book although the topic is not so easy. It's marvelous that authors describe the problems not too detailed. After the introduction they redirect to specification. In comparison to other books I must say that reading something about existence of specification is rare in practice. Here the redirection is very brief - includes chapter numbers and document name.
Cons? I know that JSF is not on the list of SCWCD but I missed it. EL & JSTL is quite hard to understand relying on this book only.
Anyway, this is a very good position to start working on JSP.
I think that the purpose of writing this book is that the reader will be trying to pass SCWD exam. Even you don't want to pass a certification, I do strongly recommend it to you.
It's also worth emphasizing that [...] is a great addition to this book. People discuss many things also that ones included in this book. When there is a lot of confusion, you can rely on Bryan or Bert's answers and clarification.
Rating: - best textbook i've ever read
This book is just fun. Besides all the kung-fu, I actually learned something about JSPs. This is the kind of textbook I'd write, if I ever do...
I really appreciated the hands-on sections and all the detailed notes. It is the first textbook I could read from cover to cover (almost there) and that doesn't put me into sleep, but put ideas into my head.
I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to have a good and fun start in Servlets and JSPs.
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