C H A PT E R

1

Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the JavaServer Pages technology.

1.1

The JavaServer Pages  Technology

JavaServer Pages

 technology is the Java

 platform technology for building applications 

containing dynamic Web content such as HTML, DHTML, XHTML and XML. The 

JavaServer Pages technology enables the authoring of Web pages that create dynamic content 

easily but with maximum power and flexibility.

The JavaServer Pages technology offers a number of advantages:

Write Once, Run Anywhere

properties

The JavaServer Pages technology is platform independent, both in its dynamic Web pages, 

its Web servers, and its underlying server components. You can author JSP pages on any 

platform, run them on any Web server or Web enabled application server, and access them 

from any Web browser. You can also build the server components on any platform and run 

them on any server.

High quality tool support

The Write Once, Run Anywhere properties of JSP allows the user to choose 

best of breed 

tools. Additionally, an explicit goal of the JavaServer Pages design is to enable the 

creation of high quality portable tools.

Reuse of components and tag libraries

The JavaServer Pages technology emphasizes the use of reusable components such as: 

JavaBeans

 components, Enterprise JavaBeans

components and tag libraries. These 

components can be used in interactive tools for component development and page 

composition. This saves considerable development time while giving the cross platform 

power and flexibility of the Java programming language and other scripting languages.

 Overview 18