JSP Advantages, compared to others

[Rob Biernat]

OK, I might be wrong here, but I've noticed that there are several products
on the market, ie ASP, ColdFusion and PHP, that are similiar to JSP. What
does JSP have to offer that these other ones dont. I understand that all
of these products can be used for database access. What is the distinguishing
feature that is lacking from these other products but is present in JSP.

Also, I learnt a bit of CORBA 2.0 programming a year back, but it seems as
though technologies like JSP and EJB have made the stuff I did not seem like
much now. Is developing using Corba, still important now, or has the component
tchnologies made it so, that sort of distributed programming is no longer
really required.

Thanks

[Larne Pekowsky]

In article <39995369$1@news.devx.com>,
Rob Biernat <rbiern01@postoffice.csu.edu.au> wrote:
>
>OK, I might be wrong here, but I've noticed that there are several products
>on the market, ie ASP, ColdFusion and PHP, that are similiar to JSP.

Nope, you're not wrong. There are a whole lot of templating/program
systems out there to make it easier to create web pages. Having lots
of competing solutions is good thing...

>What does JSP have to offer that these other ones dont. I understand
>that all of these products can be used for database access. What is
>the distinguishing feature that is lacking from these other products
>but is present in JSP.

To some extent this is a matter of personal taste, of course.
Personally I find that JSP does a better job of separating HTML from
the application logic than the others. In a previous message I talked
about how a tag library can simplify to creation of a database grid.
Just for laughs, here it is again:

<TABLE BORDER="1">
<TR><TH>Name</TH><TH>Length</TH></TR>

<awl:tracks CD="Mercury">
<TR>
<TD><%= name %></TD>
<TD><%= length %></YD>
</TR>
</awl:tracks>

</TABLE>

Here the page designer doesn't need to know anything about databases,
permissioning, or other programming issues, they can concentrate on
high-level ideas like 'CDs', and 'track names.' Likewise, the person
who wrote the tag doesn't need to know anything about HTML or how the
data will be presented, they just need to know about jdbc and Strings
and the logic that determines who can see what content from the
database.

Beyond that, there is some significance to the fact that JSPs are a
widely adopted industry standard. You can develop an application on a
free server like Tomcat, and then deploy it on an ultra-scalable,
ultra-high-performance application server like ATG's Dynamo or BEA's
WebLogic, and never have to change a single line of code. This can be
a life saver if your web site suddenly gets popular and you need a
quick upgrade path with a minimum of migration headaches.

Finally, given how fast Java and JSPs are growing, I expect there will
be a wealth of commercial and free components available in the not too
distant future.

>Also, I learnt a bit of CORBA 2.0 programming a year back, but it seems as
>though technologies like JSP and EJB have made the stuff I did not seem like
>much now. Is developing using Corba, still important now, or has the component
>tchnologies made it so, that sort of distributed programming is no longer
>really required.

Distributed programming itself is definitely alive and well. Once an
application gets beyond a certain size the best way to keep it
manageable is to break it up into well-defined components, and use
some sort of object model to encapsulate the boundaries. While EJB is
great for doing some of this, there are places where they are not
completely applicable. An obvious example is if a JSP needs access to
some Microsoft-based service. There are still plenty of heterogenous
environments where things like this may be needed.

The only problem here is that there are too many ways of doing
distributed objects. CORBA, RMI, DCOM, SOAP... each has its strengths
and uses. Personally I think CORBA is still a viable and important
technology. Sun included an ORB as a part of the Java standard as of
version 1.2, so they would seem to agree.

I don't want to sound like a commercial, but my previous book "The
Developers Guide to the Java Web Server" contains a chapter on using
distributed objects to communicate with external applications. It
doesn't go intro grate detail, it's mostly just an overview of CORBA,
DCOM and RMI, but it might be of some interest.


- Larne