Rating:  - The Print Edition is Worth Every Cent
I had read this book from cover to cover at the O'Reilly Safari online library before deciding to buy the print edition. It is the most solid servlet/JSP book around with plenty exmples. YOu won't beleive how smoothly the author moves from one topic to another. No wonder this title is among the Top 5 (most subscribed to) book at Safari.
Rating:  - Great for beginners
The book does a good job of covering the main aspects of Using Java servlets, JSP, and EJBs, but without in-depth detail.
Its well organized and the chapters flow well together. This makes it a nice learning tool, but not necessarily a good reference.
If you know Java and want to learn about using servlets, JSP, and EJBs, this is a good book to work with.
If you are already programming with servlets, JSP, or EJBs, then I would recommend Marty Hall's books as they are more in-depth and are organized in a "quick find" method.
Its a great book and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to begin developing web apps using Java.
Rating: - File Download Works
I bought this book after reading the author?s article at Java Pro site on file download. That article helped me solved the problem I had had for weeks. Previously I had tried to find the solution in many books, not only servlet/JSP books, but also ASP and PHP books, to no avail. This technique (how to send a file and make the browser display the Save window) is simple, i.e. it works by adding a certain HTTP header. Surprisingly, the author was the first (and probably the only one) to publish such a technique. I think all web programming books should include this important technique.
The book comes with free file download bean that is very easy to use, and also explains how it works. I don?t understand why the other reader from South Africa experienced problems with the bean because the bean works on the server side. Once the file gets sent to the browser, its the browser?s responsibility to save it to disk. Was he using a non-standard browser? (I myself use Netscape and IE) I also disagree with his view on long code. Pages of code, to me, show that the author was really serious in presenting real-world projects. What?s important is the code is well documented and easy to understand, which it is.
The author seems to be a programmer himself. He knows what the real problems in web programming are and offers solutions to them. This is a very good book.
Rating:  - Not as good as everybody seems to think
This book attempts to cover a wide range of topics with varying degrees of success. The book could have been a lot better had the author chosen fewer topics and provided more detail.
There were a couple of times, where I was very dissapointed with the level of detail, for example, pages and pages of JavaScript, but an odd sentence on database connection pooling. The author also does strange things. He sets out to use MySQL in the book and then goes on to use MS Access for a case study (those queries could have been written to work with MySQL -IMHO) - I'm also pretty sure that the Linux users out there also loved this one!
Through out the book I kept on getting the feeling that things were done only half measure. A prime example is the file download bean that gets provided with the book. The bean works, but the implementation is far from perfect, e.g if a bigger file exists, then it overwrites only the first part of the file, leaving the rest of the content - this is plain irrating with text files, but with binary files, well... (I ended up just writing my own).
That pretty much sums up the book. If you are a just starting out with JSP/Servlets then this book is probably an OK place to start, but there a better books out there - have a look at the books that Marty Hall wrote - I've got an old version, but time and again I find my answers in his book, not this one.
Rating: - Full of Original Ideas
This is an excellent book.
- the author is very patient when explaining the concepts and technologies. He consistently gives detailed step-by-step instructions from chapter 1 to the last chapter. (in this aspect, I have to agree with the other reviewer, zendog)
- There are so many original ideas that you cannot find in other servlets/JSP books. Most notably is the Docman project (Chapter 20) which has features found in commercial document management applications that normally cost thousands. If you build your own based on the chapter in this book, you pay nothing.
- There are useful techniques that you can only find in this book: file download, file upload, XML-based e-book, etc.
- Bonus software in CD is useful for uploading/downloading files.
Really recommend this to anyone doing Java Web programming.
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