JAVA AND WEB DESIGN - Discuss the reason for using JSP in java application.

JAVA AND WEB DESIGN- Case Study Based Question (see below)

ABC is an educational institute which is reputed for its management courses. It has 3 branches in different places and is planning to launch 2 more branches in some other places. The institute used to maintain the student details in the form of a hard copy file. One day, a fire broke out in the record section and all such records were destroyed. Next day the management decided to maintain the student details in a computer so as to prevent the damage due to such disasters. One of the management members suggested that XYZ Company is capable of developing a kind of application for maintaining records using java. The member further told other members that in his friend’s organisation the same java application developed by the XYZ Company was working very effectively and it also offered enough security parameters. 

 

Immediately the management appointed an employee who had good knowledge of java language to oversee the implementation of the required application. That employee prepared an outline of the company’s requirements and submitted it to the XYZ Company.

The requirements of institute were:

For institute’s employees–student details, course details, materials, and access rights.

For students it was– Course material, feedback on assignments, course details and faculty details.
XYZ company’s web designers developed a prototype of an application based on the requirements of the ABC institute. Now the programmers of XYZ Company detailed the process of application development based on the specified requirements. 

 

They decided that for display purpose they can use JSP (Java Sever Pages) and to retrieve the details of a particular student, they would create JDBC connection to the all branches. The student details can be stored in a database table (server side) by using MySql. They also decided to use servlets for internal process. That is, sending of request and obtaining response from the server. After developing the application, they submitted it to ABC institute for testing purpose. During the testing process, it was found that there is no proper security mechanism in the application. 

 

That is, the application permitted ‘Login’ by every member. So ABC Company asked XYZ Company to install security mechanism in the application such that it gives separate access to the employees and students. XYZ Company modified the application by giving only limited and absolutely necessary access rights to the concerned users. Also a new security parameter added to the application, prevented access by a user for 24 hours if he/she entered incorrect ‘Login’ details for three consecutive times.

a) Give reasons as to why ABC institute decided to choose XYZ Company for the development of Java application.
b) Discuss the reason for using JSP in java application.

ANSWER:
A: ABC institute chose XYZ company for development of Java application because they understood the benefits of e-records as they were so far keeping hard copies of student details. A member of the ABC institute informed the management that XYZ Company is capable of developing Java bases application, and that the application was working efficiently in his friend’s organisation. They lost all files in fire and the management decided to use an application to store details in a computer.

The advantage of using computer system for managing an institute is that data can be backed up and even if there is loss of local data due to fire or natural disaster, the data backup can be retrieved and restored.

B: The XYZ Company chose to build the application on Java platform and the requirements of the institute are such that a database is also required to store details of students etc. As per the requirement of the ABC institute they needed a dynamic web page. Hence JSP (Java Server Pages) was used in the application.

Some advantages of choosing JSP:

· JSP is fairly easy to code.

· It can be used to extract information from the database or to retrieve user preferences.

· It also provides a partition between the presentation layer and the implementation layer. This is true because the presentation layer resides on the client side, whereas the implementation layer resides on the server side. Since the content and the web page appearance is separate it is easy maintain and web designers and developers can work independently.

· JSP is platform independent and hence does not require a specific platform to run.

· It is useful in the creation of database driven Web applications using JDBC.

· It helps you to embed Java code into HTML or XML document quickly and easily to create dynamic Web pages or Web applications.

JSP is a server side scripting technology. JSP is object oriented programming language that is based on Java and is open source and hence free. JSP is an alternative to Microsoft’s Active Server Pages. 

 

JSP was used to retrieve the details of a particular student and display. Java Server Pages are scripted pages that talks to the database to send and retrieve information from database. The details of the students are stored in a MySQL database. It was decided that they would use servlets for internal process for talking to the database.