JavaServer Pages
This seminar is hosted by the Trinity College of Quezon City, and conducted by Ms. April Mendoza on the 17th of March 2004. The main topics that are discussed is bout JavaServer Pages(JSP), Tomcat, the Java Web server and the functionalities of J2EE for web developers. The speakers make a rough introduction to the audience which are the functionalities of Java that can be used on JSP. This seminar is intended for students that have a background on at least the Java and HTML language. 
JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology, which abstracts servlets to a higher level, is an open, freely-available specification developed by the Java Community Process (JCP) for generating dynamic content, and a key component of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification. Many commercially available application servers (such as BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Live JRun, and Orion) support JSP technology. 
JSP technology is being used everywhere on the Web including airline reservation systems, banking systems, and shopping. The new release, Version 2.0, is an upgrade to JSP 1.2 with several interesting new features. The objective of JSP 2.0 is to make the task of developing dynamic Web pages easier than ever without having to learn the Java programming language. 
JSP 2.0 is an upgrade to JSP 1.2 with several new interesting features that make the lives of Web application designers and developers easier. The objective of JSP 2.0 is to make JSP easier to use than ever, and more importantly to be used without having to learn the Java programming language itself. It simplifies the Tag APIs by adding a new extension mechanism called SimpleTag. 
In addition to several other improvements, the new key features that have been introduced in JSP 2.0 are: 
1.	A simple expression language (EL), which can used to easily access data from JSP pages. The expression language simplifies writing scriptless JSP-based applications without using Java scriptlets or Java expressions.
2.	New syntax for defining reusable custom actions using JSP technology directly. The syntax is delivered into .tag and .tagx files which can be written by developers and page authors.
3.	The XML syntax has been improved substantially. The new standard filename extensions (.tagx for tag files and .jspx for JSP files) have been added.
In order to get started with JSP 2.0, you need a JSP container that supports the JSP 2.0 specification and the Java Servlet 2.4 specification. Luckily, Jakarta Tomcat 5.0 (Alpha release) supports the new JSP 2.0 and Servlet 2.4 specifications. Download and install Tomacat.
Information to be passed to JSP pages is communicated using JSP scoped attributes and request parameters. An expression language (EL), which is designed specifically for page authors, promotes JSP scoped attributes as the standard way to communicate information from business logic to JSP pages. Note, however, that while the EL is a key aspect of the JSP, it is not a general purpose programming language. Rather, it is simply a data access language, which makes it possible to easily access (and manipulate) application data without having to use scriptlets or request-time expression values.
You can access application data either as a property of an object, using the dot (.) operator, or a named array element using the bracket ['name'] operator. The expression ${data} represents the scoped variable named data. You can retrieve properties from collections using either the dot (.) or bracket ([]) operator: 
•	The dot (.) operator is used to retrieve a named property. For example, the expression ${customer.name} indicates the name property of the customer scoped variable.
•	The bracket operator ([]) can be used to retrieve a named property, as in ${customer["name"]}. The bracket operator can also be used as ${customers[0]} to refer to the first item in the customers collection.
JSP 2.0 makes is easier than ever to rapidly develop and easily maintain dynamic Web pages. Despite the fact the word "Java" appears in JavaServer Pages, with JSP 2.0 page authors can develop innovative dynamic Web pages without having to learn the Java programming language. The examples shown throughout the article demonstrate how easy it is to get started using the new features in JSP 2.0 to develop dynamic Web pages.

Reaction Paper:
JavaServer Pages
Hosted by: Trinity College of Quezon City
Conducted by: Ms. April Mendoza
March 17, 2004

Submitted by: Jeffrey Victorino
CS 430 Fri 4:45-7:45PM
Mrs. Fajardo