"JSP has a couple of important advantages that makes it stand out from the crowd of competing technologies such as ASP, PHP, and Cold Fusion," says Hans Bergsten, author of the new book JavaServer Pages (O'Reilly, $39.95). "JSP is a specification, not a product. This means vendors can compete with different implementations, leading to better performance and quality. And JSP is an integral part of the Java subset for server-side applications (J2EE). This makes it easy to integrate JSP with other enterprise systems, such as databases, directory servers, messaging and transaction services, and ensures that JSP evolves in step with all the server-side technologies."

JavaServer Pages shows how to develop Java-based web applications without having to be a hard-core programmer. The author is one of the authors of the JSP specification. He provides a thorough overview of JSP concepts and discusses how JSP fits into the larger picture of web applications. "JSP 1.1, with its introduction of portable tag libraries, is the first version of the JSP specification that truly allows for the holy grail of web applications: complete separation of application logic and presentation," says Bergsten.

The JSP 1.1 specification was released late 1999, but compliant web containers did not appear on the market in full force until the summer and fall of 2000. Between the release of the specification and the release of compliant products, a lot of the vague areas of the specification have been clarified.

"There's an enormous interest in JSP right now," explains the author. "Partly because JSP is an integral part of the J2EE platform that all major commercial as well as open source application servers support. J2EE has become the de facto standard for web applications, with the result that JSP is part of the package for most of them."

Web page authors will benefit from the chapters on generating dynamic content, handling session information, accessing databases, authenticating users, and personalizing content. In the programming-oriented chapters, Java programmers learn how to create Java components and custom JSP tags for web authors to use in JSP pages.

"This is a great book: it was written by a key contributor not only to the JSP specification, but also to the JSP and Servlet reference implementations. Filled with useful examples, it stands as an important text in the adoption of JSP in the market"--Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart, lead JSP Specification Engineer.

Online Resources:

• Check out Hans's Top Ten JSP Tips.

• Chapter 5, Generating Dynamic Content, is available free online.

• More information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, author bios, and samples.

• See some samples of JSP.

• A cover graphic in jpeg format.