Head First Servlets and JSP, 2nd Edition

Last-minute things you need to know

This is a learning experience, not a reference book. We deliberately stripped out everything that might get in the way of learning whatever it is we’re working on at that point in the book. And the first time through, you need to begin at the beginning, because the book makes assumptions about what you’ve already seen and learned.

We use simple UML-like diagrams.

Although there’s a good chance you already know UML, it’s not covered on the exam, and it’s not a prerequisite for the book. So you won’t have to worry about learning servlets, JSP, JSTL, and UML at the same time.

We don’t cover every single picky detail from the spec.

The exam is pretty detailed, though, and so are we. But if there’s a detail in the spec that’s not covered in the exam, we don’t talk about it unless it’s important to most component developers. What you need to know to begin developing web components (servlets and JSPs), and what you need to pass the exam, overlap about 85%. We cover a few things not on the exam, but we point them out so you don’t have to try to memorize them. We created the real exam, so we know where you should focus your energy! If there’s a chance that this one picky detail might be on one question on the exam, but the effort to learn it isn’t really worth it, we might skip it, or cover it only very lightly, or only in a mock exam question.

The activities ...