Just when I was beginning to find information on ASP+ hard to come by, you 

bods at Wrox come up with your new "Preview of ASP+" book - so at last it 

should be possible to get some hard facts on what ASP+ will consist of.



I've been ploughing through various Wrox books on ASP-ADO-RDS-XML etc as an 

aid in getting to grips with Web development, and until recently I was

feeling reasonably comfortable with these technologies and had even got to 

the stage where I was producing some "real" working web applications for my 

back-end databases.



And then recently informed by a sharp-suited consultant that ASP "isn't 

really up to producing scaleable applications, and Java/JSP is the only 

real choice here". Quite an interesting opinion, I thought, and so I began 

visiting the Java/JSP lists that Wrox also run - and I've been referring to 

"Professional JSP" for some more information in this area. Now, I may have 

got the hold of the wrong end of the stick - but some of the info in

"Professional JSP" certainly seems to suggest that Java/JSP is a more 

powerful architecture than ASP for web development. Has anybody at Wrox got 

an unbiased, authorative opinion on this issue ?



And of course, just to complicate matters, ASP+ is on the horizon - and 

that definitely looks a huge step forward for ASP, considering features 

like "server-side controls", "component-based and caching of the final 

binary code" are apparently implemented. So, will ASP+ actually be as 

powerful as Java/JSP appear to be ?



For me, these questions are crucial, as I'd really like to be able to 

concentrate on whichever architecture is best for web development.

I'll now sit back and await any interesting point of view on this issue.





Ray

From: Chanoch Woggers

To: Daniel Walker

Fowarded: aspx@p...

-----------------------Reply separator:--------------------



here is a somwhat biased opinion



Comparisons of JSP against ASP can go to varying depths, this is a broad 

overview including some opinions. If you have any experience of ASP and 

COM/VB you will know that the best thing about it is that it gets things 

done. It is a very rapid dev platform, and although is not an ideal 

programming platform is very easy to learn and perfect for beginners and 

pros alike. (ASP+ now uses VB as its main language and does away with the 

scripting languages.)



That is also true for JSP although Java offers better (and enforced) 

error/exception handling that's better for client/server applications among 

the other benefits of the Java language, portability, easier debugging etc. 

Note that you will need to invest in some bean training for secure 

applications that are scalable, future proof. Either way you will need to 

learn component technology.



Tag libraries make for very powerful extensions to JSP, have a look at some 

of the material on them.



The J2EE enterprise platform for Java and Enterprise JavaBeans, now means 

that transactions and database access etc are managed by the platform which 

makes for much easier development. I think in terms of databases the two 

are more or less equivalent although the above is a major plus.



JSPs are compiled into servlets and cached by the server which means that 

they are very fast to serve.



My main argument for JSP over ASP is that it enforces the application 

designer to consider scalability, good practice, future proofness, 

flexibility etc. In ASP it is common to see code mixed freely with markup. 

This leads to applications that are difficult to update and maintain. In 

JSP, all examples, training and support belabor the point that the 

application should be well designed. This not only means a better system, 

the consistency of programming means that a programmer new to the company 

should be able to understand what is going on much faster. Also IMHO, there 

is a much more open-source tendency with Java which means that there is a 

lot of code out there which you can customize/learn from or just plain use. 

Also the requirement from Sun for reference implementations means that 

there are huge shortcuts to be made by referring to the example code given 

with the SDKs and the documentation has been standardized too.





Chanoch Wiggers

Wrox Press 

Programmer to Programmer (TM)

p2p.wrox.com



http://www.wroxconferences.com/WebdevUSA



<!-- www.wroxconferences.com/conference.wml -->



".... Users will have to rely on [the] standard HCI mechanicsms provided by 

their [device] to terminate the call (the off button)."





On 07/14/00, "Ray Murphy" wrote:

> Just when I was beginning to find information on ASP+ hard to come by, you

bods at Wrox come up with your new "Preview of ASP+" book - so at last it

should be possible to get some hard facts on what ASP+ will consist of.



I've been ploughing through various Wrox books on ASP-ADO-RDS-XML etc as 

an

aid in getting to grips with Web development, and until recently I was

feeling reasonably comfortable with these technologies and had even got to

the stage where I was producing some "real" working web applications for 

my

back-end databases.



And then recently informed by a sharp-suited consultant that ASP "isn't 

really up to producing scaleable applications, and Java/JSP is the only 

real choice here". Quite an interesting opinion, I thought, and so I began

visiting the Java/JSP lists that Wrox also run - and I've been referring 

to

"Professional JSP" for some more information in this area. Now, I may have

got the hold of the wrong end of the stick - but some of the info in

"Professional JSP" certainly seems to suggest that Java/JSP is a more 

powerful architecture than ASP for web development. Has anybody at Wrox 

got

an unbiased, authorative opinion on this issue ?



And of course, just to complicate matters, ASP+ is on the horizon - and 

that definitely looks a huge step forward for ASP, considering features 

like "server-side controls", "component-based and caching of the final 

binary code" are apparently implemented. So, will ASP+ actually be as 

powerful as Java/JSP appear to be ?



For me, these questions are crucial, as I'd really like to be able to 

concentrate on whichever architecture is best for web development.

I'll now sit back and await any interesting point of view on this issue.





Ray

Here is Alex Homer's reply to this message, which I forwarded to him.

Orignial Message:--------------------------------------------



My take would be that ASP+ and .NET are as good as anything else that's 

about, and probably faster than anything else on MS operating systems. 

Maybe versions will also be available for other OS's and machines in the 

future as well? It seems to have many advanced features to provide 

resource-efficient and scalable solutions. However, not being a Java/JSP 

expert, I can't really provide actual comparisons.



Alex Homer





On 07/14/00, ""Ray Murphy"" wrote:

> Just when I was beginning to find information on ASP+ hard to come by, you

bods at Wrox come up with your new "Preview of ASP+" book - so at last it

should be possible to get some hard facts on what ASP+ will consist of.



I've been ploughing through various Wrox books on ASP-ADO-RDS-XML etc as 

an

aid in getting to grips with Web development, and until recently I was

feeling reasonably comfortable with these technologies and had even got to

the stage where I was producing some "real" working web applications for 

my

back-end databases.



And then recently informed by a sharp-suited consultant that ASP "isn't 

really up to producing scaleable applications, and Java/JSP is the only 

real choice here". Quite an interesting opinion, I thought, and so I began

visiting the Java/JSP lists that Wrox also run - and I've been referring 

to

"Professional JSP" for some more information in this area. Now, I may have

got the hold of the wrong end of the stick - but some of the info in

"Professional JSP" certainly seems to suggest that Java/JSP is a more 

powerful architecture than ASP for web development. Has anybody at Wrox 

got

an unbiased, authorative opinion on this issue ?



And of course, just to complicate matters, ASP+ is on the horizon - and 

that definitely looks a huge step forward for ASP, considering features 

like "server-side controls", "component-based and caching of the final 

binary code" are apparently implemented. So, will ASP+ actually be as 

powerful as Java/JSP appear to be ?



For me, these questions are crucial, as I'd really like to be able to 

concentrate on whichever architecture is best for web development.

I'll now sit back and await any interesting point of view on this issue.





Ray

>>My main argument for JSP over ASP is that it enforces the application 

>>designer to consider scalability, good practice, future proofness, 

>>flexibility etc. In ASP it is common to see code mixed freely with markup.



>>This leads to applications that are difficult to update and maintain. 



Of course ASP+ now boasts the ability to separate code and markup...



Chris

   While I haven't build any major applications on JSP, I have on ASP and 

it is consistantly blazingly fast.. even in situations where the server 

hardware would seem woefully underpowered. The sites I've built have not 

gone beyond a few dozen concurrent users, but there are ASP-based sites 

that host much, much more than that. I don't think it has any scalability 

issues, and I know the performance is there.

   The only advantage that JSP/Java offers (at least in theory) is that you 

could work in any number of application server and OS environments. But is 

the language really the hard part to re-learn, or is it the proprietary 

frameworks and components that each of the app servers provide?