While JSP may be great for serving up dynamic Web content and separating content from presentation, some may still wonder why servlets should be cast aside for JSP. The utility of servlets is not in question. They are excellent for server-side processing, and, with their significant installed base, are here to stay. In fact, architecturally speaking, you can view JSP as a high-level abstraction of servlets that is implemented as an extension of the Servlet 2.1 API. Still, you shouldn’t use servlets indiscriminately; they may not be appropriate for everyone. For instance, while page designers can easily write a JSP page using conventional HTML or XML tools, servlets are more suited for back-end developers because they are often written using an IDE — a process that generally requires a higher level of programming expertise.
When deploying servlets, even developers have to be careful and ensure that there is no tight coupling between presentation and content. You can usually do this by adding a third-party HTML wrapper package like htmlKona to the mix. But even this approach, though providing some flexibility with simple screen changes, still does not shield you from a change in the presentation format itself.
For example, if your presentation changed from HTML to DHTML, you would still need to ensure that wrapper packages were compliant with the new format. In a worst-case scenario, if a wrapper package is not available, you may end up hardcoding the presentation within the dynamic content. So, what is the solution? One approach would be to use both JSP and servlet technologies for building application systems.
