How come you hardly ever see .jsp's?

Robin1982

I am a Java devloper and haven't much experience with web content, but as a general web user I rarely see websites utilising .jsp - any theories?

dahamsta

Because java sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls?

grahamor

you will see large companies using it, like aer lingus. This is because lots of the technology they already use is java based so hooking up the web backend to their internal systems would be easier if the languages were the same.

Eircom also use it.

Rollo Tamasi

Ken Shabby wrote:

Because java sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls?

do you have a source for this statement?

leeroybrown

I'm sure that there are plenty of big multi-tier sites still using Java (EJB with JSP) but there are far simpler/quicker ways to get sites up and working perfectly. Most sites just don't have the level of complexity that justifies using Java in the first place.

Also, the widespread use of Java for websites was a trend that is about five years old and has died off somewhat since.

jmcc

Robin1982 wrote:

I am a Java devloper and haven't much experience with web content, but as a general web user I rarely see websites utilising .jsp - any theories?

Most of the web is either static or php based. This is because most of the web is really brochureware. This is not a theory but based on work I did indexing all websites in com/net/org/biz/info/ie last year. The use of .jsp seems to be limited to the more expensive sites that can afford to employ Java programmers or have a need to interface a backend using Java.

I remember that rather perverse language Pascal being taught as an academic language. Java seems to have replaced it. Java can do a lot of things but the web is often very simple and it can be easier to do things in PHP. There is another aspect to this - many sites are put together by people who are not academically trained in computer science.

Then you have the Apache/IIS split. Microsoft IIS uses ASP - a rather good scripting language (you can tell that Microsoft bought it in rather than developed it in-house). So a developer has to make a decision based on the frontend (the webserver) and the backend (the database). PHP developers are cheaper than good Java developers. For almost anything but the more complex sites, Java is complete overkill. But the simplicity aspect appears again - PHP is easily integrated with Apache and ASP is integral to IIS. Java and JSP requires an extra level of complexity to the server side.

Regards...jmcc

Laguna

Well Nintendo sites use .jsp pages...

I use .asp when developing myself, it's handy for me as I had a lot of prior exposure to Visual Basic, it's not as prevalent as .php on the net though. I couldn't say why .jsp isn't on more sites on the net to be honest, maybe people tend to steer clear of it due the myth that Java is crap (which it isn't)..

DOLEMAN

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

do you have a source for this statement?

Me.

DOLEMAN wrote:

Because java sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls

Java, for webpages, makes no sense. When I see a jsp page I think, "IT Manager with a Marketing Degree".

Arch-Stanton

Java server pages are excellent especially for a developer, however, one of the reasons you don't see many around is that it's not really suited for the shared hosting enviornment.

Yes, you can have the Tomcat engine running on a shared hosting server, but the amount of resources it uses makes it commercially impractical, hence, a lot of hosts don't advertise it.

.

The Corinthian

Java Server Pages were in reality simply Sun’s response to MS’s Active Server Pages. While they had already developed Servlets, Sun saw MS doing well in the scripting market and reckoned they wanted a piece of that. It’s important to note this as it in part explains the slow take up in JSP in the beginning, as the initial versions were clunky to say the least. This slow start crippled the growth of JSP and also given the ease of use of the alternatives (ASP and later PHP) meant it never became a ‘popular’ platform.

However, indirectly, both Arch-Stanton and jmcc best explain the other reason why JSP and Java is seemingly less popular - it’s more expensive. Much of this is precisely because Sun decided to target the enterprise market concentrating on high-level scalability and security - at a price. As a result you’ll find that the majority of enterprise-level sites (such as financial institutions) presently run on Java.

So as the vast majority of sites on the Web don’t fall into this category, but are more often than not, as jmcc pointed out, brochureware, this is why you’ll find very few JSP based sites out there.

rsynnott

There are quite a few stealth java sites. If you're using something like Struts properly, every URL should be a servlet call with arbitrary URL (you'll occasionally see extensions of .do. That's because a very early Struts tutorial used that extension in a rather threatening way which implied that you'd better use it, or else, I think). The Struts servlet then calls a user-defined servlet, then a user-defined JSP for presentation, and returns the result. The URL is never .JSP.

Similarly, there are a number of sites based on ISAPI, Apache extensions, LISP, Ruby and other oddities out there. They're just not necessarily easily identifiable.

The .php and .asp extensions (and .aspx; Microsoft seems to have picked up on the exposure the extension gives them, and use it even though it's not strictly necessary), in fact, can be seen as an accidental marketing victory for the technologies. People have heard of them; they see them constantly.

Personally, I quite like Java as a webdev language, though pure jsp sites tend to be as messy and awkward to maintain as their PHP and classic ASP counterparts.

nuttz

DOLEMAN wrote:

Me.



Java, for webpages, makes no sense. When I see a jsp page I think, "IT Manager with a Marketing Degree".

That's a pretty naive statement if you ask me!

is_that_so

jmcc wrote:

I remember that rather perverse language Pascal being taught as an academic language. Java seems to have replaced it. Java can do a lot of things but the web is often very simple and it can be easier to do things in PHP. There is another aspect to this - many sites are put together by people who are not academically trained in computer science.

Part of the attraction of Pascal was its suitability as a teaching language. I believe C followed by Java tends to be the pattern these days. IMO everyone should learn some C.

rsynnott

is_that_so wrote:

Part of the attraction of Pascal was its suitability as a teaching language. I believe C followed by Java tends to be the pattern these days. IMO everyone should learn some C.

Indeed, also at least some form of assembly and chip-level architecture.

Eoin

The Corinthian wrote:

Java Server Pages were in reality simply Sun’s response to MS’s Active Server Pages. While they had already developed Servlets, Sun saw MS doing well in the scripting market and reckoned they wanted a piece of that. It’s important to note this as it in part explains the slow take up in JSP in the beginning, as the initial versions were clunky to say the least. This slow start crippled the growth of JSP and also given the ease of use of the alternatives (ASP and later PHP) meant it never became a ‘popular’ platform.

I think that the Sun equivalent to ASP was Java Script Pages, not Java Server Pages. Java Server Pages are "proper" Java, while Java Script pages aren't much more than JavaScript moved from <script> tags to <% tags!

grahamor wrote:

you will see large companies using it, like aer lingus. This is because lots of the technology they already use is java based so hooking up the web backend to their internal systems would be easier if the languages were the same.

Eircom also use it

Both of these companies use it to integrate into the BroadVision application APIs. Given that neither site appears to have been updated in a while, I would think that they are running JavaScript, rather than Java Server pages (both of which BroadVision supports).

The Corinthian

eoin_s wrote:

I think that the Sun equivalent to ASP was Java Script Pages, not Java Server Pages. Java Server Pages are "proper" Java, while Java Script pages aren't much more than JavaScript moved from <script> tags to <% tags!

No, you are incorrect.

Eoin

The Corinthian wrote:

No, you are incorrect.

Well, there is definitely a difference between Server-side JavaScript pages and Java Server pages - both of which have a JSP extension.

rsynnott

eoin_s wrote:

I think that the Sun equivalent to ASP was Java Script Pages, not Java Server Pages. Java Server Pages are "proper" Java, while Java Script pages aren't much more than JavaScript moved from <script> tags to <% tags!

What on earth? You can use JavaScript for classic ASP, but anything labelled JSP should be a Java Server Page (Java embedded in HTML, then generally compiled into a servlet).

eoin_s wrote:

Both of these companies use it to integrate into the BroadVision application APIs. Given that neither site appears to have been updated in a while, I would think that they are running JavaScript, rather than Java Server pages (both of which BroadVision supports).

No, no, your javascript JSPs are imaginary, as far as I can see. Have you ever written a JSP?

eoin_s wrote:

Well, there is definitely a difference between Server-side JavaScript pages and Java Server pages - both of which have a JSP extension.

There is certainly a difference between them, but only one of them has a JSP extension; the only implementation of the other I know of is the classic ASP one (strictly speaking, EMCAScript, not JavaScript). Please provide evidence to the contrary.

Eoin

rsynnott wrote:

What on earth? You can use JavaScript for classic ASP, but anything labelled JSP should be a Java Server Page (Java embedded in HTML, then generally compiled into a servlet).

No, no, your javascript JSPs are imaginary, as far as I can see. Have you ever written a JSP?

There is certainly a difference between them, but only one of them has a JSP extension; the only implementation of the other I know of is the classic ASP one (strictly speaking, EMCAScript, not JavaScript). Please provide evidence to the contrary.

They are not imaginary, please don't be so condescending. I'm not talking about JScript in ASP, I am talking about JScript that has a JSP extension. It is/was not a common implementation, and possibly dependent on the particular application platform that it was developed for. I have done a good bit of development using this (horrible) scripting before. I will try and dig out links, as Sun used to have documention about it.

I think this may be what I am referring to:
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/JavaScript/Client-side-and-Server-side-JavaScript/5/

rsynnott

eoin_s wrote:

They are not imaginary, please don't be so condescending. I'm not talking about JScript in ASP, I am talking about JScript that has a JSP extension. It is/was not a common implementation, and possibly dependent on the particular application platform that it was developed for. I have done a good bit of development using this (horrible) scripting before. I will try and dig out links, as Sun used to have documention about it.

I think this may be what I am referring to:
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/JavaScript/Client-side-and-Server-side-JavaScript/5/

JavaScript isn't a Sun creation, and I'm fairly certain they've never used it in their products or licensed it.

That Netscape product did use Javascript server-side (Javascript is a Netscape creation); fairly certain it didn't refer to it as 'JSP' though.

Interestingly, though, version 2 (and version 2 only) of Resin supports JavaScript in JSPs using some form of JSP->Java translation. (http://www.caucho.com/articles/resin_js.xtp) It also does the same for various other languages.

Eircom are certainly using neither.

The Corinthian

eoin_s wrote:

They are not imaginary, please don't be so condescending. I'm not talking about JScript in ASP, I am talking about JScript that has a JSP extension. It is/was not a common implementation, and possibly dependent on the particular application platform that it was developed for. I have done a good bit of development using this (horrible) scripting before. I will try and dig out links, as Sun used to have documention about it.

No, typically the extension to JavaScript or JScript (Microsoft’s version of the language) is .js - not .jsp, which is the standard extension for Java Server Pages. This is regardless of whether it is server or client side JavaScript that is being used.

rsynnott wrote:

JavaScript isn't a Sun creation, and I'm fairly certain they've never used it in their products or licensed it.

JavaScript was Netscape’s baby, however Sun have rolled it out too as a result of their acquisition of iPlanet.

Eoin

rsynnott wrote:

JavaScript isn't a Sun creation, and I'm fairly certain they've never used it in their products or licensed it.

That Netscape product did use Javascript server-side (Javascript is a Netscape creation); fairly certain it didn't refer to it as 'JSP' though.

Interestingly, though, version 2 (and version 2 only) of Resin supports JavaScript in JSPs using some form of JSP->Java translation. (http://www.caucho.com/articles/resin_js.xtp) It also does the same for various other languages.

Eircom are certainly using neither.

Sorry, I was getting Netscape and Sun confused. Although, Sun do provide documentation here: http://docs.sun.com/source/816-6411-10/

Both eircom and Aer Lingus use the BroadVision platform which supports both Java Server Pages and JavaScript pages - both of which have a jsp extension. Newer versions of BroadVision can use JBoss as the engine providing a proper J2EE environment, but previous versions use a proprietary CORBA daemon that processes the JavaScript on the server.

Due to the licensing costs (and numerous technical issues - just google "BroadVision sucks") of BroadVision, it is quite a rare implementation. I would imagine that NAS is not very common either.

Eoin

The Corinthian wrote:

No, typically the extension to JavaScript or JScript (Microsoft’s version of the language) is .js - not .jsp, which is the standard extension for Java Server Pages. This is regardless of whether it is server or client side JavaScript that is being used.

My last post probably makes this clearer, but the Netscape Application Server and BroadVision platform use server-side JavaScript that has a JSP extension.

The Corinthian

eoin_s wrote:

My last post probably makes this clearer, but the Netscape Application Server and BroadVision platform use server-side JavaScript that has a JSP extension.

I've never used BroadVision, but the extension for server-side JavaScript on NAS is not .jsp. Also:

http://research.nihonsoft.org/javascript/ServerGuideJS12/appdev.htm#1049038

nuttz

Correct me if I am wrong but is today's serverside JavaScript not called AJAX,
used by all the big players in the industry and one of the latest buzz words in Web 2.0?

Eoin

nuttz wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong but is today's serverside JavaScript not called AJAX,
used by all the big players in the industry and one of the latest buzz words in Web 2.0?

I'm probably going to get this all wrong as usual, but in a word no. AJAX is a collection of technologies, not one in it's own right. The JavaScript that runs is client side, but allows a server-side page to be executed asynchronously.

The Corinthian

nuttz wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong but is today's serverside JavaScript not called AJAX,
used by all the big players in the industry and one of the latest buzz words in Web 2.0?

Yes, you're wrong.

rsynnott

eoin_s wrote:

...BroadVision platform use server-side JavaScript that has a JSP extension.

So, not Sun then, no? Or indeed even vaguely mainstream. (Actually, I'd argue that BroadVision's things aren't JSPs AT ALL in that they don't seem to fit the spec).

The Corinthian wrote:

JavaScript was Netscape’s baby, however Sun have rolled it out too as a result of their acquisition of iPlanet.

Oops, missed that completely. Fair enough

nuttz wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong but is today's "serverside" JavaScript not called AJAX,
used by all the big players in the industry and one of the latest buzz words in Web 2.0?

You're wrong. AJAX is (usually meant to mean) asynchronous javascript; it can talk to an arbitrary HTTP app without interrupting the browser. It's client-side, though; it just communicates with a server.