Avoiding "Roll your own" components w/ JSP

[Bill Pfeiffer]

Do you see JSP's as a technology that we lend itself to prebuilt HTML or XML
based componants (such as the calendar mentioned in the previous question?
I currently work with SilverStream app server and one of its biggest benefits
is being able to drag and drop data aware (or even simple programmable) objects
onto a page. It would be nice if such a set of components were available
in a non-proprietary fashion. It appears that JSP would be a good vehicle
for providing such components.

Do you see such a market emerging in the (hopefully near) future?

[Larne Pekowsky]

In article <3998b7a7$1@news.devx.com>, Bill Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@gte.net> wrote:
>Do you see JSP's as a technology that we lend itself to prebuilt HTML or XML
>based componants (such as the calendar mentioned in the previous question?

Absolutely! Everything about JSPs is meant to be componentized. So
far most of the components out there are beans, as opposed to page
components. And so far most of those beans are meant for client-side
applications. However, I expect that we'll start seeing more server
side beans (and EJBs), along with page components and tag libraries
very shortly.

This is really the old chicken-and-egg problem. Component vendors
don't want to build anything until there are enough people using the
platform, and people selecting a platform don't want to use something
until their are lots of components available for it. I think Sun was
very smart to open-source the JSP reference implementation. This has
made JSPs easily available to everyone, making them a more enticing
target for component vendors.

>I currently work with SilverStream app server and one of its biggest
>benefits is being able to drag and drop data aware (or even simple
>programmable) objects onto a page. It would be nice if such a set of
>components were available in a non-proprietary fashion.

I couldn't agree more. You might be interested in netbeans
(www.netbeans.org), a free, open-source development environment for
Java, written in Java. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet,
but it has some JSP support including a "JSP Wizard" that, to quote
from their web page at http://www.netbeans.org/features/jsp.html:

generates code and HTML for a JSP page that surfaces the
properties of the bean class(es) you choose

I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but it seems to
be a strong step in the right direction. As JSPs become more common,
I have no doubt there will be more components and development
environments.

- Larne