Hardcore Java focuses on the little-touched but critical parts of the Java programming language that the expert programmers use. Learn about extremely powerful and useful programming techniques such as reflection, advanced data modeling, advanced GUI design, and advanced aspects of JDO, EJB, and XML-based web clients. This unique book reveals the true wizardry behind the complex and often mysterious Java environment. Sampl e Chapter 2, The Final Story, is available free online.

Take the ONJava Reader Survey -- Here's your chance to influence the direction of ONJava.com and possibly win some O'Reilly books in the process. Take this year's ONJava survey and let us know what topics you'd like to see the site tackle, as well as what Java books you'd like to see O'Reilly publish.

Explorations: Googleminer, Part 1 -- William Grosso begins exploring an Internet application built for the "Internet Operating System" on top of the Google APIs: Googleminer, in this article on java.net. William is the author of Java RMI.

Java APIs for Bioinformatics -- This introduction to Java APIs for bioinformatics includes usage information, examples, and current design challenges for API developers in the life sciences field. You'll find all of O'Reilly's books and articles on bioinformatics at bio.oreilly.com.

Cooking with Java Servlets & JSP, Part 2 -- Learn to access an EJB using the WebLogic JNDI Tree, and get set up with Amazon's Web Services API, in these sample recipes from Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook.

Cooking with Java Servlets & JSP -- You can use the Java Plug-in HTML Converter to generate tags for embedding an applet, and configure a javax.sql.DataSource for use in a servlet with Tomcat. Learn how to do these things and more in a few sample recipes from Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook.

Finalists for the 2004 Jolt Awards -- Software Development magazine recently announced the finalists for the 14th annual Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards. Among the finalists are java.net and O'Reilly Network in the category of "Websites and Developer Networks," and Head First Java and Programming .NET Windows Applications in the "Books--Technical" category. The awards ceremony will take place on March 17 during SD West 2004.

Six Cool New JSP and Servlet Features -- Bruce Perry describes six cool new features that Java developers who use Tomcat 5.x and other Servlet-API-2.4- and JSP-2.0-compliant containers will want to use in their projects. Bruce is the author of Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook.

Book Preview: Eclipse -- The new Eclipse Foundation was recently announced at EclipseCon, and the Eclipse project is moving toward a June release of Eclipse 3.0. O'Reilly & Associates will publish Steve Holzner's Eclipse: A Java Developer's Guide this summer, and here is a beta preview of Chapter 5, Building Eclipse Projects Using Ant (PDF).

Safari Gets Bigger and Better -- There are now more than 2,000 books from the industry's leading technical publishers available on Safari Bookshelf. As the library grows, so does its functionality: searches are powerfully precise and as broad or specific as you wish; and now, with a Safari Max subscription, you can download chapters to read offline. Safari will help you save time, reduce errors, keep current, and save more money than ever with up to 35% off print copies of your favorite books. If you haven't yet gone on Safari, try a free trial subscription.

Appropriate Data Structures and Algorithms -- How do you identify the performance problems that can stem from using an inappropriate or non-optimal data structure? Find out in Chapter 11 of Java Performance Tuning, 2nd Edition. If you like this chapter, read the whole book (and up to nine others) on Safari with a free trial subscription.

What's New in Tomcat 5 -- Jason Brittain looks at Tomcat 5's new features and offers insight into the goals established for version 5.0, which had a direct impact on feature development. Jason is a coauthor of Tomcat: The Definitive Guide.

New Titles on Safari -- Search, annotate, and read your favorite O'Reilly books on the O'Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf. New titles include: sendmail Cookbook; DNS on Windows Server 2003; RELAX NG; Postfix: The Definitive Guide; Java Database Best Practices. If you haven't gone on Safari yet, get a free trial.

Top 15 Ant Best Practices -- Eric M. Burke offers his 15 best practices for using Ant and for writing well-crafted Ant buildfiles. These tips were inspired by Eric's own mistakes on previous projects, and by horror stories that other developers relayed to him. Eric is a coauthor of Java Extreme Programming Cookbook.

Explorations: Generics, Erasure, and Bridging -- In this first of a series of java.net articles that explore the obscure and dusty corners of the Java universe, William Grosso explains the reasons for and the mechanisms of erasure and bridging, which are code transformations the compiler performs in order to implement the generics specification. William is the author of Java RMI.

Amazon's Top 10 Editors' Picks -- Two O'Reilly titles have made the cut in Amazon's 2003 Top 10 "Computers & Internet" books: Head First Java ranks in at number seven, and the favorite book of the year is Google Hacks.

Oracle Magazine Author of the Year --『Learning something new is interesting, but it's even better when you can share it.』So says Jason Hunter, Oracle Magazine's 2003 Author of the Year. Jason is the publisher of Servlets.com and the author of O'Reilly's Java Servlet Programming, 2nd Edition.

JSP 2.0: The New Deal, Part 2 -- In his second article on new features in the JavaServer Pages 2.0 specification, Hans Bergsten discusses improvements made in the area of error handling and the new deployment descriptor features. Hans is the author of JavaServer Pages, 3rd Edition.