Summary

Today you studied the basics of JavaServer Pages and how JSPs are related to Java servlets. Then you learned about the support provided by WebLogic Server 7.0 for the JavaServer Pages API 1.2 version of the technology. After this, you looked at the life cycle of a JSP, which you found is very similar in almost all respects to the life cycle of a Java servlet. In addition, you studied the important tags available in JSPs, namely, directive tags, declaration tags, expression tags, scriptlet tags, and action tags. You also looked at your next cue card, the flowchart listing the steps for developing a Web application using JavaServer Pages. From the flowchart you found how different and easy it is to develop Web applications using JSPs since you do not need to do any explicit compiling to build JSP applications. This responsibility rests with the WebLogic Server, as you found out.

Finally, you built the entire BookShoppingServlet in JSP to understand the difference between writing a Web application using JavaServer Pages and writing one with Java servlets. The various aspects of deploying the JSP in a WebLogic Server using the web.xml deployment descriptor file and WebLogic-specific deployment information using the weblogic.xml file were discussed. One interesting topic that you studied regarding this was deploying a JSP Web application as a Java servlet application.

The main point that came across today was how easy it is develop Web applications using JSP by embedding Java source code in an HTML file. It is not just ease of use that JSP provides but also the separation of look and feel from content. You will utilize this aspect of JSP when building the sample MVC application on Day 6 about advanced concepts of JSP.