JSP specs 0.92 vs 1.0 / 1.1

[Carine B]

We have bought a software package written in jsp 0.92.
Before we further customize this, I'd like to know if we should stick to
v0.92 or should change to v1.0 or 1.1.

I can't find any info on the differences between these 3 versions to decide
if it is worthwile to make the effort or how much of a difference it is...

Would you happen to be able to summarize differences or point to another
resource ?

Thanks in advance,

Carine Bruyndoncx

[Fernando Ribeiro]

There are a lot of things as Mr. Pekowsky can explain to you. I would suggest,
although, you keep it in JSP 0.92 if you do need something like tag libraries.
You can do lots of things even with an implementation of the 0.92 spec (most
of what people do, I think).

The only problem I see on that is the "errorPage" directive which is really
useful and allows you not to handle any exceptions you dont want to inside
your JSP page - it is available only on implementations of the 1.x spec.
I am trying to find ways to handle exceptions even a better way right now
and that feature seems a good way to go.

Fernando Ribeiro
fribeiro@bol.com.br

"Carine B" <carine.bruyndoncx@village.uunet.be> wrote:
>
>We have bought a software package written in jsp 0.92.
>Before we further customize this, I'd like to know if we should stick to
>v0.92 or should change to v1.0 or 1.1.
>
>I can't find any info on the differences between these 3 versions to decide
>if it is worthwile to make the effort or how much of a difference it is...
>
>Would you happen to be able to summarize differences or point to another
>resource ?
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Carine Bruyndoncx

[Larne Pekowsky]

Carine B <carine.bruyndoncx@village.uunet.be> wrote:
>
>We have bought a software package written in jsp 0.92.
>Before we further customize this, I'd like to know if we should stick to
>v0.92 or should change to v1.0 or 1.1.

Mr. Ribeiro makes some good points, but personally I would suggest
moving to the latest version available as soon as you can. 0.92 is
very different from later versions, and is basically a dead end.
Rather than investing more time and effort into it, I'd recommend
going through the pain of migration now, it will make things much
easier down the road.

>I can't find any info on the differences between these 3 versions to decide
>if it is worthwile to make the effort or how much of a difference it is...

There's an excellent summary of 0.92 at
http://www.kirkdorffer.com/jspspecs/jsp092.html.

Basically, the differences between 0.92 and 1.0 are huge, almost every
tag has been radically changed. For example, in 0.92 you access a
bean with the USEBEAN tag, which looks like this:

<USEBEAN NAME="nameofbeaninstance"
TYPE="nameofbeanclass"
LIFESPAN="page|session|application"> ... </USEBEAN>

In 1.0, beans are accessed with jsp:useBean, as in:

<jsp:useBean id="idOfbean" class="classOfbean"
scope="page|request|session|application/>

The exact meaning of each of these tags, in terms of how they create
or retrieve the bean, is also very different. There are also tags
that existed in 0.92 that have been left out of 1.0. 0.92 also did
not support custom tags or tag libraries.

There have been numerous changes between 1.0 and 1.1, but many of
these are clarifications of vague points in the specification, and
changes in some of the internal definitions that are of concern only
to people implementing new JSP engines.

>Would you happen to be able to summarize differences or point to another
>resource ?

Appendix E of the 1.1 specification lists all the changes from 1.0
through 1.1. I can't locate a concise list of differences between
0.92 and 1.0. They are so different that it's almost worth thinking
of them as completely different specifications.

- Larne