Preface
Since I wrote the first edition of this book, servlets and the server-side Java platform have grown in popularity beyond everyone’s wildest expectations. Adoption is pervasive. Web server vendors now offer servlet support as a standard feature. The Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), specification has included servlets as a core component, and application server vendors wouldn’t be caught dead without a scalable servlet implementation. It’s more than just vendor-driven hype too. Servlets have become the basis for JavaServer Pages (JSP) and other frameworks, and servlet technology now supports such high-traffic sites as ESPN.com and AltaVista.com.
Not surprisingly, the servlet landscape looks somewhat different today than it did when the first edition went to print. The Servlet API has undergone two revisions, with a third revision on the way. The familiar startup companies Live Software and New Atlanta that once made money selling the JRun and ServletExec servlet engines (now called servlet containers) have gotten themselves noticed and were purchased by larger web-focused companies, Allaire and Unify, respectively. They now offer features above and beyond basic servlet support in an effort to differentiate themselves.
Amazingly, the official
javax.servlet
and
javax.servlet.http packages have been the first
Java classes to be officially released as open source. They were
transferred to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and
now reside at http://jakarta.apache.org. The packages ...