JSP, Servlets and MySQL by David Harms

<pre>Author/s : David Harms
Publisher : Hungry Minds, Inc
Category : J2EE & Distributed Computing
Review by : Valentin Crettaz
Rating : 9 horseshoes</pre>
This book will help you get your Java Servlets, JSPs and MySQL databases to work together and provide a full-fledged dynamic database-driven web site. The author, David Harms, masters at presenting the concepts clearly. Server-side Java components --JSP, Servlets and JavaBeans-- are briefly introduced. Then, the author explains what relational databases are and why the latter are so important when designing dynamic web sites. He also goes into the details of installing, configuring and running the MySQL server and client as well as how to properly design a database.
The Model-View-Controller (Model 2) design pattern is introduced in a way that definitely shows how each of its component areas perfectly map to server-side Java components and databases, that is Java servlets take the role of the Controller, JSP and custom tags the role of the View and JavaBeans and the database the role of the Model. Such decomposition makes any application very flexible and easily maintainable.
The final part is dedicated to some strategies one can use to make benefit of its database, like how to authenticate users, survey them, collect server statistics and so on. The Struts application framework which already implements perfectly the MVC design pattern is also briefly introduced.
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