Before you start developing with Servlets and JavaServer Pages, you need to understand two very important things: Why is using the technology desirable, and what is needed in order to use the technology? This chapter answers these two questions, and in the process provides an introduction to the entire book. We start with an introduction to traditional Web development. The discussion describes why Servlets and JSP were initially created and why the technologies are currently popular. The end of the discussion segues to the software needed in order to run the book s examples