Welcome to Jason's Soapbox. This page contains links to Jason's recent articles -- and a few old articles that still have relevance today. Articles are listed in reverse chronological order, so for articles in a series make sure to read from the bottom.

What's New in Servlets 2.5 by Jason Hunter for JavaWorld (January, 2006)

Covers the new features and changes in Servlet API 2.5.

Making the the Most of Java's Metadata, Part 3: Advanced Processing of Annotations by Jason Hunter for OTN (Coming Soon)

Soon to be published, will cover how to process annotations at runtime and compile-time.

Making the the Most of Java's Metadata, Part 2: Custom Annotations by Jason Hunter for OTN (July, 2005)

Learn how to write your own annotation types and make use of built-in annotations to control their behavior.

Making the the Most of Java's Metadata by Jason Hunter for OTN (January, 2005)

Learn how to use the metadata annotations provided in J2SE 5.0.

J2SE 1.4 #7: Java Logging by Jason Hunter for OTN (August, 2004)

Final article in the series of J2SE 1.4 features, covering JSR-45 logging.

J2SE 1.4 #4: SocketChannel and ServerSocketChannel by Jason Hunter for OTN (February, 2004)

I show the SocketChannel and ServerSocketChannel classes and demonstrate how they enable servers to scale to thousands of clients using the new Selector class and non-blocking IO.

XQuery Tricks and Traps by Jason Hunter for Oracle Magazine (January, 2004)

In this third article about XQuery, I focus on important but tricky and commonly misunderstood aspects of the XQuery language. The article is based on the May 2003 drafts.

Oracle Magazine Author of the Year in Oracle Magazine (November, 2003)

A little blurb about my winning the Oracle Magazine Author of the Year award.

J2SE 1.4 #3: File Management Made Easier by Jason Hunter for OTN (December, 2003)

In this third article about J2SE 1.4, I introduce the powerful new FileChannel class and demonstrate how you can use it for reading, writing, mapping, locking, and manipulating files.

Updating XQuery by Jason Hunter for Oracle Magazine (October, 2003)

In May 2003, the W3C issued a new XQuery draft specification, and this follow-up to "X is for XQuery" explains the most interesting changes and new features added to the May draft specification, including: library modules; prolog variables; external functions; and new functions for debugging, error handling, and formatting.

Big Changes Coming for Java (Java 5) by Jason Hunter for OTN (September/October, 2003)

JDK 1.5 release contains major improvements in Java syntax.

J2SE 1.4 #2: The Proper Channels by Jason Hunter for OTN (August, 2003)

The second article in the J2SE 1.4 series: An introduction to New I/O (NIO) Buffer and Channel classes.

J2SE 1.4 #1: New I/O Channels by Jason Hunter for OTN (June, 2003)

I'm writing a series of articles for the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) about the J2SE 1.4 features that affect enterprise developers. The first article here covers New I/O's Channels. Later articles will cover buffers, file channels, non-blocking IO, regular expressions, charsets, assertions, and logging.

X is for XQuery by Jason Hunter for Oracle Magazine (May, 2003)

XQuery has been gaining momentum over the last year and looks like it will become a very important technology to server-side Java programmers, and probably all back-end programmers really. I've gotten into it big time over the last year and have found it fun and productive, and it's only getting better as the spec gets solidified and vendors start having robust implementations. If you'd like to get up to speed yourself, check out an article I wrote in Oracle Magazine titled "X is for XQuery".

Servlet 2.4: What's in store by Jason Hunter for JavaWorld (March, 2003)

On March 7, 2003, Sun Microsystems released the "Proposed Final Draft 2" specification for Servlet 2.4. This article explains the differences between Servlet 2.3 and 2.4, discusses the reasons for the changes, and explains how you can take advantage of the new features in 2.4.

JDOM in the Real World by Jason Hunter for Oracle Magazine (March, 2003)

The March/April issue of Oracle Magazine has a "JDOM in the Real World" article showing how I use JDOM to manage the RSS feeds on Servlets.com, including how I get blog entries to show up on the front page.

JDOM and XML Parsing, Part 2 by Jason Hunter for Oracle Magazine (November, 2002)

The Nov/Dec issue of Oracle Magazine has a continuation of the JDOM article, covering namespaces, ResultSetBuilder, XSLT, and XPath.

JDOM and XML Parsing, Part 1 by Jason Hunter for Oracle Magazine (September, 2002)

The Sept/Oct issue of Oracle Magazine has an introductory article on JDOM covering Beta 8. The article is freely available online. It provides good coverage for newbies as well as some historical stories and advanced tricks.

An Interview with Jason Hunter by Alan Williamson and Jason Hunter for JDJ (June, 2002)

The June 2002 issue of Java Developer's Journal has an interview with me on the Apache/Sun announcement. The questions were reader-submitted and quite original, covering some topics not discussed earlier like what Sun has to gain, what this means for JBoss, how Apache works internally, and how Apache feels about the JCP competing againt Apache projects.

Bugs You Need to Know About by Jason Hunter (September, 2001)

A list of bugs every servlet programmer should know about, with workarounds. Read it and avoid a headache later!

Filter code with Servlet 2.3 by Jason Hunter (June, 2001)

Freely available servlet filters you can use today

Building Servlets.com, Part 1: Dreamweaver 4 Templates by Jason Hunter (May, 2001)

An introduction to Dreamweaver 4 templates

Servlet 2.3: New features exposed by Jason Hunter (January, 2001)

What changed between API 2.2 and 2.3

Free Cache: Come and Get It! by Jason Hunter (March, 2000)

An in-depth look at CacheHttpServlet (now better documented in my book's 2nd Edition)

Reactions to "The Problems with JSP" by Jason Hunter (February, 2000)

What people said about "The Problems with JSP".

The Problems with JSP by Jason Hunter (January, 2000)

A serious look at JSP's problems. Now quite outdated, but included for historical reference.

What's new in Servlet API 2.2? by Jason Hunter (October, 1999)

What changed between API 2.1 and 2.2

Sun and Apache team up to deliver servlet and JSP code by Jason Hunter (June, 1999)

I actually had the exclusive honor to announce the Apache Jakarta project creation in this JavaWorld story.

Introducing the new Servlet API 2.1 by Jason Hunter (December, 1998)

What changed between API 2.0 and 2.1

How to get started with server-side Java by Jason Hunter (March, 1997)

Jason's first professional writing project, covering Netscape's server-side applets. These were the days before servlets. Included for the sake of nostalgia.