Perhaps the biggest difference between ASP and JSP is that the former relies mainly on Microsoft technologies. Whilst the later is designed to be platform and server independent.

The question you have to ask yourself is; does this matter?

There is no indication that one will render the other obsolete in the foreseeable future.

In many ways, the biggest difference between JSP and ASP technologies lies in the approach to the software design itself. JSP technology is designed to be both platform and server independent, created with input from a broad community of software developers. In contrast, ASP is a Microsoft technology that relies primarily on Microsoft technologies.

JSP technology adheres to the write once, deploy anywhere philosophy of the Java architecture. Instead of being tied to a single platform or vendor, JSP technology can run on any Java enabled Web server and is supported by a wide variety of tools from multiple vendors.

Although ASP technology is available on other platforms through third-party porting products, to access components and interact with other services, the ActiveX objects must be present on the selected platform. If not present, a bridge to a platform supporting them is required.

For large projects JSP is usually preferable. When used properly JSP is easier to project manage. Some developers can concentrate on building Java beans while other members concentrate on the presentation parts of the project (Graphical User Interface). This is aided by the object-oriented nature of Java.

Because business logic becomes spaghetti code rather easily the maintenance issues can swamp you quickly. JSP is much cleaner and easier to maintain for large projects.

For smaller projects, ASP is better suited. Partly, this is because ASP is very simple, but also because there are fewer hassles in setting up and maintaining an ASP web site. The superb IDE (integrated development environment) of Visual Interdev greatly aids the creation of ASP web applications.

ASP integrates seamlessly with Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Web Server) and there are numerous resources which explain how to set up an ASP. This makes setting up a web site based upon ASP a relatively simple task.

Using the Microsoft ADO to data enable your project is simple and fast. It works with most data sources and is feature packed. This speed and power is passed on to you, which means you are that much more likely to finish that time critical project on time.


When deciding which technology to use in your web project there are some points to remember;

  1. What current expertise do you have?
    In other words, stay with what you're good at. There's no reason to drop ASP for JSP if your expertise is in ASP. If you're new to web development I would lean towards ASP as it has an easier learning curve over JSP/Servlets/Java. If you already have experience in Java, then JSP is definitely the way to go.

  2. How and where are you going to host your site?
    If you are going to host your web site outside of your business then ASP is the clear winner. Currently it is much easier to host an ASP site over a JSP site. Over time, JSP hosting options will improve but this will take time. ASP suffered the same problem a few years ago.


  3. If you're going to host your own site, then JSP support is not an issue. In fact, if you're going to use a web server other than Microsoft's IIS, JSP is strongly recommend. This is due to the independent nature of JSP relative to a web server, and the ability to choose a JSP container (a container object is what the web server calls to process the JSP page) that best fits your needs.


  4. ASP, on the other hand, is really only meant to be used on Microsoft's web server. There are third party solutions to remove this limitation, but you can bypass the issue altogether and use JSP, which is web server independent.


  5. How many concurrent users are you expecting? For web applications where the concurrent number of users is below 500 both ASP and JSP function well. However, when you begin to scale your web sites to larger configurations, things change rapidly. JSP tends to have better support for larger web sites and for web farming solutions.

Conclusion
Both ASP and JSP offer solid solutions for web applications. Generally there is little to choose between the two of them.

We can predict that JSP is likely to be widely accepted for the creation of large corporate web applications dealing with 'mission critical' information. Microsoft's ASP is likely to remain more popular with smaller web applications.

Certainly there is no indication that one will render the other obsolete for the foreseeable future.

 

Ripping World can offer development and consultancy for all web technologies. We have vast experience in all development technologies, from XML, Java and JSP to C# and .Net.

Our web designers work closely with our web developers and programmers to provide full-cycle development. Since 1996 we have been designing web sites and developing web applications.

Our approach to web design and development is pragmatic. Programming discipline and creative design go hand in hand with our projects.