Sams Teach Yourself J2EE™ in 21 Days

Comparing JSP with Servlets

As you have seen JSPs have several advantages over servlets. They

• Are quicker to write and develop

• Focus on the page layout and delegate Java logic to supporting JavaBeans and custom tags (as will be discussed on Day 14)

• Differentiate the Web page presentation (HTML) from the underlying logic (Java)

• Can be written by non-Java–aware developers provided suitable supporting beans and tag libraries are available

• Support a standard error reporting mechanism using the error page directive

However, JSPs do have some downsides:

• Error identification and correction is complicated by the translate and compile lifecycle.

• Large volumes of embedded Java scriptlets can reduce the maintainability of the page.

In general, you should use ...