Prentice Hall and Sun Microsystems. Personal use only; do not redistribute.

12

Chapter 1 Overview of Servlets and JavaServer Pages

Versus Static HTML

Regular HTML, of course, cannot contain dynamic information, so static

HTML pages cannot be based upon user input or server side data sources.

JSP is so easy and convenient that it is quite reasonable to augment HTML

pages that only benefit slightly by the insertion of dynamic data. Previously,

the difficulty of using dynamic data precluded its use in all but the most valu 

able instances.

1.5 Installation and Setup

Before you can get started, you have to download the software you need and

utorial/

configure your system to take advantage of it. Here's an outline of the steps

vailble at  cat T

involved. Please note, however, that although your servlet code will follow a

om

standard API, there is no standard for downloading and configuring Web or

application servers. Thus, unlike most sections of this book, the methods

described here vary significantly from server to server, and the examples in

omcat are a /Apache T

this section should be taken only as representative samples. Check your

or T m

server's documentation for authoritative instructions.

ons f

recti

Obtain Servlet and JSP Software

Your first step is to download software that implements the Java Servlet 2.1 or

.coreservlets.cow

2.2 and JavaServer Pages 1.0 or 1.1 specifications. If you are using an

up to date Web or application server, there is a good chance that it already

TE: Updated di

has everything you need. Check your server documentation or see the latest

NO http://ww

list of servers that support servlets at 

http://java.sun.com/prod 

ucts/servlet/industry.html

. Although you'll eventually want to deploy

in a commercial quality server, when first learning it is useful to have a free

system that you can install on your desktop machine for development and

testing purposes. Here are some of the most popular options:

Apache Tomcat. 

Tomcat is the official reference implementation of the servlet 2.2 

and JSP 1.1 specifications. It can be used as a small stand alone 

server for testing servlets and JSP pages, or can be integrated into 

the Apache Web server. However, many other servers have 

announced upcoming support, so these specifications will be 

Second edition of this book: www.coreservlets.com; Sequel: www.moreservlets.com.

Servlet and JSP training courses by book's author: courses.coreservlets.com.