Sun's certification exams are challenging. They demand careful preparation and thorough study. And they call for careful self-assessment.
The book offers only a point-by-point exposition of Sun's own objectives for the exam. While this fidelity to the exam objectives is laudable, it presents very little material beyond regurgitation of the Servlet API, example code written by others and little material of practical use in developing web applications with servlets and JSP. Sun puts much thought into its exam objectives and they strive to make the exams more than mastery of API trivia. This book It seems that the author has little experience with servlets and JSP outside of writing the book and is unable to illuminate why Sun considers its exam objectives are important.
I mentioned the certification exams call for careful self-assessment. It easy to wear your Hiliter to a nub but practice exams are crucial testing your mastery and indicating areas of further study.
Unfortunately, the three practice exams included in the book haven't even had the passing glance of an editor. Questions call for two multiple choice answers and the answer key gives one or three. Fill in the blank questions are answered in the key as multiple choice. Other answers to questions are flat out wrong. Beyond these obvious errors, a sizeable fraction of the questions are confusingly worded.
And then there is the included CD. The book advertises it as containing a "powerful, full-feature test engine." What it neglects to mention is that the engine is a Windows application. Is it so much more difficult to develop a Java test engine that can be run on a variety of platforms? Isn't that the Java way? Or, failing that, mention somewhere in the book the system requirements for the CD?
