Kids in grade school put HTML pages on the Internet. However, there is a monumental difference between a grade school page and a professionally developed Web site. The page designer (or HTML developer) must understand colors, the customer, product flow, page layout, browser compatibility, image creation, JavaScript, and more. Putting a great looking site together takes a lot of work, and most Java developers are more interested in creating a great looking object interface than a user interface. JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology provides the glue between the page designer and the Java developer.
If you have worked on a large-scale Web application, you understand the term change. Model-View-Controller (MVC) is a design pattern put together to help control change. MVC decouples interface from business logic and data. Struts is an MVC implementation that uses Servlets 2.2 and JSP 1.1 tags, from the J2EE specifications, as part of the implementation. You may never implement a system with Struts, but looking at Struts may give you some ideas on your future Servlets and JSP implementations.
In this article, I will begin with a JSP file that uses elements you may be familiar with and discuss the pros and cons of such a page. I will then cover Struts and how it can control change in your Web project and promote specialization. Finally, I will re-develop the simple JSP file with the page designer and change in mind.
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