I just finished reading Sun's "Comparing JavaServer Pages and Microsoft
Active Server Pages Technologies" article from the Java Web site -- see
http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/jsp-asp.html.
The article claims that Java provides superior performance over
interpreted scripting languages. Of course, the article fails to mention
that compiled servlets are byte code that also gets interpreted. So, is
there any validity to this claim? Does JSP provide a noticeable
performance increase over ASP?
Memory management and exception handling are also cited as JSP
advantages. This seems like a legitimate claim to me. Are there any
former ASP developers on this mailing list that have run into problems
stemming from misbehaving applications crashing servers because of
memory mismanagement. Have any of you former ASP developers found
yourself cursing ASP because it lacked exception handling?
The article implies that JSP emphasizes components over scripting, which
makes it easier to revise content without affecting logic and vice
versa. However, it seems as though ASP is just as "componentized" as
JSP; after all, ASP can use COM objects and JSP can use JavaBeans. Am I
missing something here? Is JSP somehow more component worthy than ASP?
Speaking of components, I would venture that COM objects are more
plentiful and mature than JavaBeans, which would give ASP an advantage
over JSP. Is this a valid assertion?
As far as I understand, ASP does not provide a customizable tag
mechanism as does JSP. Is that the case? Does anyone know if Microsoft
plans to add such a feature to ASP in the future? I can see that a
customizable tag mechanism would be beneficial, but how big of a deal is
it? Does anyone care to comment on how they are using customizable tags,
and how miserable life would be without it?
Of course the biggest advantage of JSP over ASP cited by Sun is the fact
that JSP is platform independent, and therefore more widely supported by
Web server and application server vendors. However, there are companies
that have developed plug-ins for servers other than Microsoft servers to
run ASP. In light of that, how big of an advantage is JSP's platform
independence?
JSP is language specific but platform independent, whereas ASP is
language independent and platform specific. Language independence is
probably quite an advantage for companies with legacy systems, whereas
platform independence seems to be somewhat of a dubious advantage
because of the fact that software can be purchased to run ASP on non
Microsoft's Web servers. Comments?
Finally, I'd love to see a show of hands from former ASP developers that
have moved over to JSP, with a short explanation of why you made the
switch.
david
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