I am curious why there arent many hosting companies offering JSP & Servlet hosting.. CGI's were the solution to building a server side application. Now there is PHP, ASP, and JSP & Java servlets. JSP and Java servlets are much faster than PHP and ASP. I have seen cgi applications written in perl which are extremely slow. And sites that run JSP are extremely fast. So why is it that not many people want to use JSP and Java servlets..

Java is a wonderful language: Easy to learn, well made, and conforms well to the object-oriented standard.

Problem is it's tough implementing jsp and servlet support. Most servers nowadays come with some kind of JRE on their systems but is left untouched as the learning curve to properly implement Apache modules to run this filetype is difficult, and business wise implementing a stock PHP/CGI setup is a much better use of time.

I've also seen some very poorly written java servlets. Don't assume just because there's bad PHP and good Java that Java's faster. Well-written PHP executed at about the same speed as java - if not faster because of it's implementation with apache.

PHP/CGI Requires no compiling, simply upload (and occasionally CHMOD) your file and you're set. JSP acts much the same, but why learn a new language when there's such an overwhelming number of PHP/CGI scripts users can download and modify to suit there needs.

I believe Java will remain a niche market. It's a wonderful language and currently being taught at many institutions as a stepping stone to C++, but I'm afraid that's likely where it will remain.

Regards,

-Doc

I agree with The Doc. JSP is a really wonderful and robust language, but unlike simple plug and play architectures like PHP where you just throw in an Apache mod, JSP requires a mod, a JRE, and a servlet container all of which have their own configurations. These all can be found free but most webhosts out there still like to charge an arm and a leg for shared servet/jsp hosting, and then in my opinion at least, a java web environment really works best when you have full control over the server which means a plain dedicated server is usually the best option. (You can even find some that cost the same as some crazy JSP shared hosters charge).

While I think java is a pretty quick language to pick up, it certainly has a different learning curve compared to PHP which is even easier to pickup and start programming with, so thats why I feel JSP will never be as popular as PHP or perl.

You know, when I was in some of my electrical engineering courses, there were people in there complaining about how hard Java is and how nothing makes sense. They said they were up day and night working on their projects that never seemed to work. I had previously taken a cource in C and one in C++ so I was exempt from Java. I didn't want to take it either.

Now I see all these jobs paying darn good money for Java programmers. I don't know what it is, but Java seems to be in very high demand. All the engineering job postings I read that had to do with software had Java as a main requirement. Even some of the hardware ones had "Java a plus" in there.

As for keeping the thread on-topic, the reason there aren't too many hosts that offer JSP is probably because there aren't many hosts that understand how JSP and Servlets run on a server. They just use canned scripts (CPanel) and servers (RaQ) and administer the easy things like PHP and Perl. To support JSP and Java, you need 1) lots of server resources and 2) knowledge of how things like Apache and Tomcat (or some other software like Resin) work together.

If hosts saw a bigger market for JSP/Servlets, perhaps they'll consider offering it and that could potentially drive down the prices of the ones that charge "an arm and a leg." This isn't to say that there ISN'T a big market for JSP/Servlets, just most may not realize it or care...

For security conscious web hosts, the biggest obstacle in offering JSP/servlet is that it is not possible for a single JVM process to run as different user. CGI can be made this way by using suexec, PHP too can run as CGI. The only secure way to run JSP/servlet is to run a JVM for each user. However, it would consume too much system resources :(

Offtopic: but along the lines of difficulty

My first and huanting downtime was the install of Jrun.

We were installing it and at the same time I believe someone was probing our server defenses. Dam install brought our systems compleatly down for 16 hours. Talk about trial by fire.

Now I will be budgeting a consultant to handle the job.

Mike from Adehost

ADEhost.com

I wanted to respond the few posts at the top about the status of java as a programming language and a development environment.

Java and PHP both have their places. But just because you see more php doesn't mean java isn't popular or that it is not used often. On the contrary, Java is an enterprise-class development language, and it is much more powerful than PHP/CGI in terms of its support for enterprise computing environment. It has amazing API and libraries, a very nice and extensible language core, and has been inherently designed to meet all aspects of programming, not to mention that all major companies embrace it.

In the future, Java technology will become more and more popular. As for the issue of security on shared JVM, I have read the specificiation for Java security model, and it has been designed to separate Apps(called App Domain) running in a shared JVM, it just currently doesn't have that implementation(you could actually hire a java programmer to code that, but the next version(1.5+) of JDK should include that). Because of the complexity that comes with the power, I don't think java would be appropriate for small websites, but certainly it will become more popular.

Peter

Originally posted by ckpeter

As for the issue of security on shared JVM, I have read the specificiation for Java security model, and it has been designed to separate Apps(called App Domain) running in a shared JVM, it just currently doesn't have that implementation(you could actually hire a java programmer to code that, but the next version(1.5+) of JDK should include that). Because of the complexity that comes with the power, I don't think java would be appropriate for small websites, but certainly it will become more popular.

Peter

Peter,

I have been reading Tomcat manual for some time now, and it seems Tomcat already has a working security manager to prevent users from messing with each other files. So, we don't have to wait for JDK 1.5 afterall.

Oh Yes, I read tomcat4's manual too, and I remembered that it has something to do with the <engine> <server> tags...

But for a general-purpose app-isolation in a shared JVM, I think we still need to wait for JDK 1.5:rolleyes:

Peter

The door into developing JSP apps is at a totally different level compared to
PHP or perl. Partly because "Java" is something that people just don't pickup to do their website. One of the reasons why is the amount of work needed to get it working.

It however has faired pretty well in the enterprise because bigger firms trust products like iPlanet and BEA. That's why for now at least, JSP and Servlet hosting is not a economically feasible solution. Why put in time to get it working if 1 person out of 100 will utilize it?

I once bought an account from one of Alabanza's resellers (like jumpline.net and linuxwebhost.com) and they offered JSP/Servlets. I was surprized at how easily i could upload my files and have them work so well. After I asked how many people actually used the feature, the tech support said that I was the one of only 15 users out of all the users on about 10 servers..