XSP. (c2003)

Abstract

Java Server Pages (JSP) and Active Server Pages (ASP) have been extensively used for producing dynamic web content. JSP has been placed as the tool to develop the front end of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) compliant web applications. Despite their wide use, there are still questions to be addressed by these technologies, such as: How easy and rapid is it to develop applications with these two technologies? Why is J2EE getting a tough competition from other recent frameworks? In this paper, we propose a new technology, XML Server Pages (XSP), which aims to support Rapid Application Development (RAD) within J2EE environments and, thus, allows J2EE to survive the competition. XSP is based on an architecture that makes it flexible and platform independent. HTML and JavaScript knowledge is all that is required to build J2EE compliant applications with the XSP technology. Our empirical work shows that it is easier and faster to build dynamic web applications using XSP than with existing technologies.