Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages™: Volume 1: Core Technologies, 2nd Edition

Introduction

Suppose your company wants to sell products online. You have a database that gives the price and inventory status of each item. But, your database doesn't speak HTTP, the protocol that Web browsers use. Nor does it output HTML, the format Web browsers need. What can you do? Once users know what they want to buy, how do you gather that information? You want to customize your site for visitors' preferences and interests—how? You want to keep track of user's purchases as they shop at your site—what techniques are required to implement this behavior? When your Web site becomes popular, you might want to compress pages to reduce bandwidth. How can you do this without causing your site to fail for the 30% of visitors whose browsers don't ...