What is jsp page technology?

Answer 1

Java Server Pages have become an integral part of any J2EE application. They are used extensively because they can combine the features of HTML and Java. The difficulty level of JSP is half-way between HTML and pure Java. For simple tasks like displaying the current date, you write a normal HTML page and add only a small amount of Java as a scriptlet. For big tasks like processing a shopping cart, you use JSP as the mediator between the Web form and a component (Ex: Servlet) that has all the processing logic.

CGI, Perl, Active Server Pages etc were all the predecessors of Java Server Pages. Am not saying that the JSP Technology was built based on these technologies but it is safe to say that, the JSP Technology was created to overcome many of the shortcomings in the above mentioned technologies. Though the ASP technology is a web server scripting champion and is used very widely, the only problem is the Runs only in Windows Attitude of the technology. Unlike ASP, JSP has equivalent if not better features and can run in any environment making it an invaluable tool for enterprise application developers who don't want to be tied to the limitation of the system running only in Windows.

Not only does JSP run on all major platforms, but the JavaBeans used by these JSPs run on all major platforms as well.

JSP competes directly with ASP. In fact, you would be forgiven if you thought it was a copy. Sun took the same approach to JSP as it did with Java. Sun borrowed the syntax of its best competitor (ASP for JSP and C++ for Java) tweaked it a little, but built everything under the hood from scratch. Java syntax comes from C++, but it works on all platforms with no portability issues like C++ for the developer. Similarly, the JSP structure comes from ASP. The look and feel, and even some syntax is the same. However, ASP primarily uses Microsoft's versatile VBScript, while JSP uses the more powerful and portable Java and JavaScript.

How Does JSP Work?

If you remember the initial chapters in this series, you would remember the fact that JSP Pages get converted or rather Translated into Servlets before execution. Kudos to you if you remembered it. The JSP container parses the JSP source and converts the entire JSP page (HTML becomes strings and Java source code embedded in a JSP page gets copied into methods) into a Java servlet class. The HTML text is converted into a bunch of out.println statements in the order encountered. Finally, the container compiles this class into Java bytecodes. This Servlet is invoked by the Server in order to finish displaying the contents on the web browser.