This book purports to teach JDBC and Servlet programming in Java. But it actually does neither of the two. The examples are, well, murky; they use a strange programming style which makes them extremely difficult to follow. It is extremely hard or downright impossible to get anything useful out of this book. At the time it came out it was one of the few titles dealing with these subjects. But nowadays one can find quite a few books dealing with JDBC and Servlet programming which are much more instructional, transparent, and to the point.The bottom line: Skip this book. It is expensive and useful only as a doorstop.