Chapter 5. Servlets

The appearance of servlets on the Java scene marked an important transition point in the evolution of Java. In the earliest versions of Java, the promise of write-once, run-anywhere as realized through the AWT and applet technology was primarily directed at providing portability on the client side. But despite the hopes that Java would displace, or at least challenge, Microsoft for desktop dominance, it was on the server that the true promise of Java began to be realized.

Discussions of Java on the server frequently focus on the capabilities of Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), but EJB is often overkill. Servlets are the workhorse of server-side Java. Following in the footsteps of Albert Einstein, who claimed that “Everything should ...

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