I'm also currently learning JSP and Java using Tomcat. I've found the Wrox book "Beginning JSP Web Development" to be a valuable introduction to both (see the Wrox web site for a few errata). In general, JSP scripts are "wordier" than Coldfusion scripts, but JSP used in combination with Javabeans is geared to create large, complex business applications. The separation of business logic code from presentation code is a big plus, IMHO.
For further Java studies, "Murach's Beginning Java 2" is a fairly painless introduction. "SAMS Teach yourself Java in 21 Days" goes into more depth, while "Java How to Program" (Deitel and Deitel) is more of a college textbook, less suited to browsing, but more full of information. And, of course, Sun's web site has various tutorials and documentation. One minor note, JDBC jar files can go in any directory, as long as their path appears in the CLASSPATH variable. That's how I'm running Tomcat 4.0 with a MySQL JDBC driver right now. Regards, Kevin Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 21:30:13 -0000 From: "Dr. Evil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: JSP newbie kick start >> I am interested in getting started in java and jsp. I am a web developer = >> that has experience in scripting languages such as PHP, ASP and = >> ColdFusion. Could you give me some insight into what I should start = >> reading/studying? Which books? Which websites/mailing lists? Any help = >> would be appreciated. >The process can be painful, to say the least. I'm going through it >myself, and here are my tips: >I refer most often to Java Servlet Programming (O'Reilly) and Java >Server Pages, also O'Reilly. Neither of them is really complete but >between the two of them all the material is there. >Tomcat configuration can be somewhat confusing. There is a lot to >learn about directory layout and the web.xml file. So, start simple. >I'm using Tomcat as a stand-alone server because the last thing I want >to do is to have to debug tomcat-apache interaction. Also, one >critical hint about Tomcat: if you have other jar files (like for a >regexp library, a logger, a or a JDBC) they go in tomcat/lib, or >tomcat won't find them. >Speaking of loggers, you'll need one. Let me know if you need >instructions for setting up log4j with tomcat. >Good luck! =========================================================================== To unsubscribe: mailto [EMAIL PROTECTED] with body: "signoff JSP-INTEREST". For digest: mailto [EMAIL PROTECTED] with body: "set JSP-INTEREST DIGEST". Some relevant FAQs on JSP/Servlets can be found at: http://archives.java.sun.com/jsp-interest.html http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/faq.html http://www.esperanto.org.nz/jsp/jspfaq.jsp http://www.jguru.com/faq/index.jsp http://www.jspinsider.com
