11.7 JSP

Similar to ASP, Sun Microsystems developed a technology called JavaServer Pages (JSP ^[10] ) to be used in the Java world. ^[11] Again, the aim of JSP is to provide support for the design and implementation of multi- tier Web-based applications. Contrary to ASP, however, JSP relies on the Java programming language and inherits its ability to run on multiple platforms accordingly . Most importantly, JSP runs on most Web servers in use today, including, for example, Apache and Micrsoft IIS.

More specifically , JSP is implemented as a Java API that is part of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Readers familiar with servlets ^[12] will notice that JSP does not provide anything conceptually new, and that everything that can be done with a JSP page can also be done by writing a servlet. In fact, servlets have access to exactly the same set of Java APIs as JSP, and JSP pages are compiled into servlets.

JSP can be used to separate the static content of a Web page from the logic to generate the dynamic parts of it. Consequently, Web publishers can use familiar tools to create and edit Web pages, and simply embed calls to the necessary application components where needed. All they need to know is how to invoke the logic. A JSP programmer can then build and maintain the logic components .

^[10] http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/

^[11] The JSP technology is implemented, for example, as part of the Jakarta project at the Apache Software Foundation. The resulting Tomcat implementation is free and open -source. It also implements servlets. Further information about Tomcat can be found at http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat .

^[12] http://java.sun.com/products/servlet