First Steps with Java Servlets
‘Murach’s Java Servlets and JSP’ popped through my letterbox this morning. I need to get a headstart on learning JSP/Servlets before I start work and this book looked like a fairly good introduction to it. I briefly glanced through the 600 or so pages over lunch and although it seems a little basic I’m sure it’ll be a good stepping stone to something a little more complicated.
Talking of complicated: after lunch I installed Tomcat. Now I like to develop code on my machine and not have to upload it onto a server half way around the world to test. I’m not a fan of having to install Apache / MySQL / PHP individually either so I really like XAMPP for linux because it makes my life a lot easier.
Unlike the Windows version of XAMPP Tomcat isn’t provided in an easy to install addon. There is one listed on the addons page but it only works upto version 1.47 of XAMPP which isn’t much good. After messing around with old versions for a while and having no luck I decided just to install it on my Windows Server 2003 box, which worked perfectly straight away. Unfortunately now I have to do Servlet development over my local network, but that’s the price I pay for being lazy. I wonder if Apache Friends will make a properly supported Tomcat addon for XAMPP Linux soon.
Can anyone recommend an easy way to get this running on Linux?
July 17th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Now you know why Java Servlets / JSP is so “widely” used and supported. Now you know why CO525 teach PHP rather than JSP
Who’d want to maintain Tomcat for all the CS students? It’s not exactly easy for just one person, let alone a multi-user hosting system.
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Well, I used to be a PHPite but having been using JSP/Servlets at work I’m a convert. I think it depends as well, in a enterprise environment tomcat sitting behind apache works perfectly well.
PHP has so many problems: no namespace support, its loosely typed, and inconsistencies in library naming/interfaces. Java is just a much nicer language and environment. Although PHP6 is adding namespace support it can’t overcome the inherent problem of its variable system.
You’ll have to give me a heads up Mike if the book is any good. I’m sort of learning as I go at the moment, which isn’t ideal when I’m starting work on updating a globally disted, critical webapp! lol.