The basis of JSP is Java Servlets, which was first distributed in 1996. Servlets were not widely used, being difficult to code for and otherwise implement compared to other server-side scripting techniques.

In 1999 JSP 1.0 was first released, soon followed by 1.1, and then 1.2 in 2001 JSP still uses Servlets, but now they are created by the server automatically.

There are a number of different JSP-enabled servers, but an Apache variant called ‘Tomcat‘ is probably the most significant, as Apache is the most commonly used web server software.

Like PHP, JSP takes the form of Java code imbedded in a web document. The JSP code goes between and <code>%&gt;, the same as ASP. A JSP web page will be suffixed .jsp instead of .html.

JSP is of rapidly rising popularity. It has functionality in excess of that of PHP, and can be used on a variant of the most popular web server.

• Getting Started with JSP
• Rainle Designs: The History of JSP