Rating: 
Summary: Information overload
Review: Explains one aproach then rejects it in favor of another then yet another. By the end you discover that you should have bought a book on Jakarta Struts if you want to develop real JSP sites because someone has already done lots of work for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book for real programmers.
Review: I am not an expert web programmer. I am a competent programmer. I hate big thick books because you never read them all. But I have to break my no-thick-books rule for this book. It is a great reference work. You can read the first few chapters and then jump to the advanced chapter you need. I had a working JSP program written in 3 days. I never read the whole book but I did read a good 30% of it. One warning. This book is not for beginers. It is not JSP for dummies.
Rating: 
Summary: Chapter 20 is a knock out
Review: I borrowed this book from my friend and read it.This books seems to be informative but the authors should have given better examples.But chapter 20 is a real knock out as it throws excellent light on performance and helps even a beginner in JSP to understand and do a better coding in future.I feel this book is better than any other books available in market.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: I have never read such an excellent book before. No wonder the JavaRanch community rates this book 10 horseshoes!
Rating:
Summary: Good book for new/intermediate JSP developers
Review: Professional JSP (2nd) is a huge book with over 1000 pages and 18 different authors. This book is aimed at developers seeking
intermediate and advanced knowledge about JSP.
The first 4 chapters cover the basics of web development, servlets and JSP. These chapters could have been taken out to focus more on advanced topics (such as integrating with EJB). Chapters 5 and 6 present JSP pages working with servlets and JavaBeans. This includes a simple implementation of the MVC design pattern using JSP, Servlets and JavaBeans. Chapter 7 focuses on the Web Application Architecture wih more detail about designing JSP based applications. Chapters 8 - 11 go into detail about Custom Tag libraries, from building a simple tag library to custom tag idioms. Chapters 12 -17 include topics such as Java and XML, JDBC, Security, Filtering and good practice.
Chapter 18 goes through the implementation of a maintainable database explorer.
The rest of the book covers
debugging JSP, improving performance, Jakarta Struts, WAP, Generating Binary Content and using JSP within the Java 2 Enterprise Edition. Many JSP developers will want to read this book to learn about Struts and other ways of producing maintainable JSP based web sites.
This is not the kind of book you would read from start to finish but as a quick overview and reference of some advanced topics. Don't expect to become an expert by reading this book but you will have a good idea what you can and should do with JSP. Most JSP developers will find something new in this book but some will require more detail. We would recommend this book to JSP developers who have read the beginners JSP books and want to learn more about JSP.
Rating:
Summary: Good book for new/intermediate JSP developers
Review: Professional JSP (2nd) is a huge book with over 1000 pages and 18 different authors. This book is aimed at developers seeking
intermediate and advanced knowledge about JSP.
The first 4 chapters cover the basics of web development, servlets and JSP. These chapters could have been taken out to focus more on advanced topics (such as integrating with EJB). Chapters 5 and 6 present JSP pages working with servlets and JavaBeans. This includes a simple implementation of the MVC design pattern using JSP, Servlets and JavaBeans. Chapter 7 focuses on the Web Application Architecture wih more detail about designing JSP based applications. Chapters 8 - 11 go into detail about Custom Tag libraries, from building a simple tag library to custom tag idioms. Chapters 12 -17 include topics such as Java and XML, JDBC, Security, Filtering and good practice.
Chapter 18 goes through the implementation of a maintainable database explorer.
The rest of the book covers
debugging JSP, improving performance, Jakarta Struts, WAP, Generating Binary Content and using JSP within the Java 2 Enterprise Edition. Many JSP developers will want to read this book to learn about Struts and other ways of producing maintainable JSP based web sites.
This is not the kind of book you would read from start to finish but as a quick overview and reference of some advanced topics. Don't expect to become an expert by reading this book but you will have a good idea what you can and should do with JSP. Most JSP developers will find something new in this book but some will require more detail. We would recommend this book to JSP developers who have read the beginners JSP books and want to learn more about JSP.
Rating:
Summary: Good as a Novel
Review: This book is awesome. The one thing I truly love about this book is the layout. I had zero experience in JAVA/J2EE and after the first chapter it all made sense. I Actually make time to read this book. The one thing this book does that no other I have read is tech the low level nuts and bolts along with top level syntax and make it make sense. For instance, the chapter on Servlets rocks. It teaches Servlets on both "Here are Servlets" and "How to use them". I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn JSP/Servlet environment. It is a great book to learn the big picture and be able to use all know features in the technology.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book, Poor Index
Review: This book really helps you to kickstart JSP and Struts based development. But once you are running it sort of lets you down. What this book needs to truly aspire to greatness is a better index. Not just one topical index (which is nice) but a methodname based index. Wrox should take a look at the O'Reilly books, clear and easy to use indexes that support the 'professional' developer. This should however not scare you to buy this book since it is well written, easy to use and addresses both the hands-on and the conceptual needs of the brain.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Professionals
Review: Well, i bought this book with one aim: Be able to learn and actually write JSP in limited terms. Since I found a job where they wanted me to do JSP, and I was doing ASP for last 2 years. This book has even section for ASP developers on how to move to JSP. So, with this book, I was able to write jsp in a week or so. ok, Now, actually about the book: a) Great code explanation provided, as usual in any WROX books b) Great code examples (especially voting application and database explorer one) c) Tomcat and MySQL tutorial make my life easier, so i don't have to browse their sites for help - I have everything in one place (well, not everything -- but still, better then nothing) d) Yes, price is kind of high, but, they got so much in one book, so i'm pretty sure that you will be glad once you buy it I'd recommend this book for people who have to move from ASP (or any other programming language) to JSP. I would not recommend it to someone who is new to programming. Thanks for all authors. Great Job.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for real work
Review: When I needed to learn JSP (I got a job to build some serious custom tag libraries) my first stop was the Core series. I liked the Core Java 2 books. At first I liked the Core JSP books too, they are quick to read and easy to understand. But then after some weeks working on real projects I noticed that they lacked very much essential information. I found myself searching through the office copy of Professional JSP 1st edition again and again to get the job done. This 2nd edition is even better. If you are a decent programmer (not a complete beginner who's better of with some dummies books) and want to get the job done - this is the choice. The book relies heavily on examples. Several case studies with all the code implemented.
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