Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Useful as a reference to the exam only!
Comment: You should try another book, if you like to get a firm practical knowledge. I would recommend Core Servlets & JSP by Marty Hall.
In addition, i find the stylish design of this book irritating.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not just the best J2EE book... the best technical software book - period.
Comment: I'm a published author and software technician from IBM, who's been learning JSP/Servlet technology piecemeal for about 3 years. I bought this book on Amazon a few months ago, and quite honestly have to say that it is not only the best J2EE/Servlet/JSP book on the market, it's probably the best (or among the top 3) software books I've ever read (and I'm 52, and have been in software for almost 30 years - so trust me, I've read lots of books).
The authors do a masterful job of both: educating, and maintaining a high-level of interest in an otherwise complex, dry and difficult subject matter. Explaining things with a combination of straight-forward thought, images/analogies and humor the likes of which I've never experienced before.
(at the risk of redundancy) It's simply the best. I can't imagine anyone not being able to learn Servlet and JSP technology from this book - AND being able to pass the certification exam in the process. Since reading this book, I've gone out and bought every other book these authors have written.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but unfocused. Seemed rushed to market
Comment: I bought Head First Servlets and JSP after enjoying Head First Java and learning a lot very quickly from it. I liked the authors' style in Head First Java and I appreciated the way they summarized the information for me and focused on the important things in order to get productive quickly.
This book is very sub-par in comparison to Head First Java. Where was their editor in this book? The authors seems to be relying on their snappy style and illustrations in order to make up for fact that the organization and consistency in the book is poor. For example, in Head First Java, every chapter has "Bullet Point" sections that summarize and point out the most important things in the chapter. They're helpful for reviewing content or reviewing the main points of the chapter and give enough details to be useful reminders for coding or other activities. Many chapters are completely lacking any "bullet points" sections at all while other chapters have them. The exam quizzes questions at the end of some chapters are NOT adequate substitutes for bullet point summaries (they appear sporadically in some chapters and not in others, also).
The book has the feel of something that was conglomerated from various authors with different writing styles and abilities. Some chapters are short and manageable while some are monsterous and not well thought out.
If I were to guess, I'd bet that Head First Servlets and JSP was quickly conglomerated from multiple authors. It seems rushed to print with little time for revision and without editors that bothered enforcing attention to consistency, detail and technical accuracy. O'Reilly and the editors of this book, hang your head in shame for such mediocre work.
Aside from the editorial and multiple-authors problems, this book might be useful if you're looking for something long, entertaining, sometimes unfocused and inconsistent, but with some good information.
Just don't expect it to live up to the high standards of Head First Java. It doesn't meet these high standards.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Go To Download The Official Spec Instead !!
Comment: The innovative presentation is appreciated. But a book is still a rubbish with its week contents.
This book's content is serious insufficient so that readers are even not able to answer the quiz correctly in the end of each chapter by just reading the book alone.
And worst of all, this book is full of errata everywhere. Ridiculously a question can come up with no correct answer. Now I'm getting suspicious when reading the book. And most of the time I have to reference to the Sun's Servlet and JSP Spec for further and "correct" details.
Knowing this, I'd rather save USD40 and read the Official Spec instead. Now what can I do is to ask "Can I have my money back?".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Still the best to prepare for SCWCD
Comment: I have several years of experience with both software development and research of learning and teaching techniques. From the pedagogical point of view this book is unique. I have never seen any technical literature which applied the state of the art knowledge about learning as perfectly as this one (or one that even comes close to it). The result is that reading it is a lot of fun AND very efficient at the same time: The way in which the information is presented makes sure that the information is understood quickly and remembered permanently.
The authors also used their insider knowledge to cover the right topics that are on the real exam and to provide very realistic mock exam questions.
A downside is the very large errata: Many things are wrong, and many of the mock questions are ambiguous. This is not much of a problem if you read it with the errata at hand.
Technically the quality of the book is very low. The code examples are of a very poor quality. If I would not have heard of the authors before I would have thought that they were totally incompetent and had no idea about simplest principles of OOD. For example they often use class types although there is an appropriate interface (e. g. ArrayList instead of List). I have no idea how this could have happened, because anyone who read a beginner book about Java or any other OO language knows better. If you do not have a solid background on OOD this book will spoil you, and if you do it will permanently annoy you.
If you are looking for the fastest and most enjoyable way to prepare for SCWCD 1.4: This is it. Otherwise I recommend "Core Servlets and JSP" (Marty Hall).
My conclusion: It is great that there are books now that are written by pedagogues. However, it seems to be impossible to have books that are technically correct at the same time.
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