It sets the scene for server-side XML, and shows what you can do with it, by way of a parallel example done in ASP, PHP, and JSP (we have only included the first of the example sections here). The three chapters that follow this one in the book are case studies, which go into using XML with the three server-side languages mentioned above in much more detail.
This sample is taken from Chapter 8 "Introduction to Server-Side XML" of the glasshaus title "Practical XML for the Web".
For the examples in this chapter, we used Tomcat 4.0.4 on Windows 2000 Professional. Tomcat is available from http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-tomcat-4.0/release/v4.0.4/bin/ (sourcecode is also available from http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-tomcat-4.0/release/v4.0.4/src/ if you want to compile Tomcat yourself).
As well as Tomcat, we also used XTags, nightly builds of which are available from http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-taglibs/nightly/projects/xtags/ (this is a work in progress), and dom4j, available from http://dom4j.org/download.html. The JAR files for these two resources are provided in the code download.
The following table summarizes these three server-side languages:
| ASP |
PHP |
JSP |
|
| Language |
VBScript, JavaScript (amongst others) |
PHP |
Java |
| Platforms |
Windows (other platforms need third-party porting software). |
Any platform for which the sourcecode or binaries are available, which is most. |
Any platform for which the sourcecode or binaries for a JSP/servlet engine such as Tomcat are available, which is any with Java. |
| Web Servers |
Microsoft IIS (other servers need third party software). |
Apache, IIS, Netscape, etc. |
JSP files are served by a JSP/servlet engine (such as Tomcat). Any web server, including Apache, IIS, and Netscape, can be configured to send requests for JSP files to the JSP engine. Any J2EE-compliant application server should have a JSP/servlet engine. |
| Portability |
Poor |
Excellent |
Excellent |
| Scalability |
Good |
Poor |
Good |
| Component Support |
COM objects |
None |
Java classes, JavaBeans, Enterprise JavaBeans |
| Learning curve |
Low |
Medium |
High |
The only major vendor for ASP is Microsoft (Sun market an opensource version of ASP called Sun ONE Active Server Pages formerly known as Chili!Soft ASP.) We won't go into this here see http://wwws.sun.com/software/chilisoft/ for more details). PHP is open source, so there is no vendor to deal with. JSP is a set of standards and interfaces that can be implemented by anyone interested. Sun provides a reference implementation of a Java application server, which uses Tomcat as the JSP engine, but there is currently a variety of implementations (both commercial and open source) on the market.
George Petrov is a renowned software writer and developer whose extensive skills brought numerous extensions, articles and knowledge to the DMXzone- the online community for professional Adobe Dreamweaver users. The most popular for its over high-quality Dreamweaver extensions and templates.
George is also the founder of Wappler.io - the most Advanced Web & App Builder
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