In just 21 days, you can acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to develop three kinds of programs with Java: applications on your computer, servlets on a web server, and browser-launched Java Web Start applications.

No previous programming experience required. By following the 21 carefully organized lessons in this book, anyone can learn the basics of Java programming.

Learn at your own pace. You can work through each chapter sequentially to make sure you thoroughly understand all of the concepts and methodologies, or you can focus on specific lessons to learn the techniques that interest you most.

Test your knowledge. Each chapter ends with a Workshop section filled with questions, answers, and exercises for further study. There are even certification practice questions.

* Completely revised, updated, and expanded to cover the latest features of Java 6
* Learn to develop standalone Java applications, web servlets, JavaServer Pages, and Java Web Start applications
* Easy-to-understand, practical examples clearly illustrate the fundamentals of Java programming
* Discover how Swing can help you quickly develop programs with a graphical user interface
* Find out about JDBC database programming, Internet client/server programming, and XML parsing with the open source XOM class library
* Covers new features of version 6 such as Java DB, the new relational database that is now a built-in
* part of Java