focusing my study

Thanks everyone for responding to my last query "overwhelmed". It was cool to get responses Saturday morning after posting the question at midnight on Friday night. You people must not sleep.
I am really not looking to pass the certification right away. I have been advised to learn Servlets, and that to do this the amount of Java I need to know is greatly minimized. I've been having trouble learning Java with Horton's book (Beginning Java, wrox) mainly because he's using math examples to explain classes. I'm following it essentially but what should I really focus on so that I can write servlets? Surely I dont need to know 1150 pages of text. thanks for your time out there.

The basics of servlets are indeed simple. My suggestion for learning servlets is to first download and install a good, modern servlet container; Tomcat (www.jakarta.org) is the reference standard, and Resin (www.caucho.com) is my favourite at the moment. Both are free for most uses, but in my experience Resin is simpler to install and faster
Once you have installed the servlet container, and checked it by running their examples, you can start to "play". Take one of the simplest examples ("hello world" is a good start) and try changing it. Take very small steps and check that your servlet still runs at each stage. Try changing the text that is displayed; try changing it to print out todays date; try changing it to print "good morning" in the morning, and "good afternoon" in the afternoon and so on. If you need to know something while you are doing this, be very targetted and only look up exactly what you need (web searches and books with good indexes are vital here). Don't waste time and baffle yourself trying to take in the whole of the Java language and its standard APIs all at once. And don't worry that you might be doing things "the wrong way". If it works, it works. You can always improve it later if you find a better way, but get it working first.
This exercise should give you the confidence and familiarity with the tools (servlet container, text editor/IDE), where files go, what happens when you get it wrong and so on.
Only then do I recommed studying the language and APIs, but step by step. Choose a relatively simple web-application project for yourself (a "guest book"; a small, specific "database" of something you collect; a diary; etc.), and stick with it until you have it working. Try and split it into small, independently-testable chunks, and only look up what you need for each stage as you go along.
Once you've done that, Java and the servlet API should hold no terrors. You'll already be way ahead of people who've only looked at books.

To Frank Carver, aka Stud:
Thanks so much for your suggestions. Your email came amid another increasingly-expected anxiety attack over this huge door-stop Java book I tote around.
You are very cool. later, john werner

This is kind've a lame question, but what are servlets??? Are they programs that dish out files on the net. Maybe in between the server and CGI or something?

Steve

Steve I dont know squat but I've been reading a servlet book. Servlets are little Java objects that cruise around a web server. From what I can gather, in the three-tier archetecture, servlets act within the "middle tier", also know as the business logic level or "middleware" level, that acts as an intermediary between a client and a server/database. The servlet facilitates requests, data queries, responses, etc. and produces HTML pages to display data query responses. For example, a servlet could generate a neat HTML page including a graph that formats otherwise incomprehensible data returns.

I found it. For some reason, I was thinking this was on jobs discussion forum. Right after I posted, I noticed the servlets forum, which I didn't remember even existed. It didn't help any so I'm glad I posted. Thanks, I think I have a better idea now. I've never bothered to find out, since they're sort've out of the reach for the moment.
Steve
Oh I just noticed the comment about your "huge door stop book" (laugh) It's definitely a big sucker isn't it. I just now trying to learn methods. I think I'll get Just Java2, but I want to see it first to see how it gets different areas across.
Cheers!
[This message has been edited by Steven YaegerII (edited August 18, 2000).]