When Java servlets were first invented, many programmers quickly realized that they were a Good Thing. They were faster and more powerful that standard CGI, portable, and infinitely extensible.

But writing HTML to send to the browser in endless println() statements was tiresome and problematic. The answer to that was JavaServer Pages, which turned Servlet writing inside-out. Now developers could easily mix HTML with Java code, and have all the advantages of servlets. The sky was the limit!

Java web applications quickly became "JSP-centric". This in-and-of itself was not a Bad Thing, but it did little to resolve flow control issues and other problems endemic to web applications.

Clearly, another paradigm was needed ...

Many clever developers realized that JavaServer Pages AND servlets could be used together to deploy web applications. The servlets could help with the control-flow, and the JSPs could focus on the nasty business of writing HTML. In due course, using JSPs and servlets together became known as Model 2 (meaning, presumably, that using JSPs alone was Model 1).

Of course, there is nothing new under the Sun ... and many have been quick to point out that JSP's Model 2 follows the classic Model-View-Controller design pattern abstracted from the venerable Smalltalk MVC framework. Java Web developers now tend to use the terms Model 2 and MVC interchangeably. In this guide, we use the MVC paradigm to describe the framework architecture, which might be best termed a Model 2/MVC design.

The Apache Struts Project was launched in May 2000 by Craig R. McClanahan to provide a standard MVC framework to the Java community. In July 2001, version 1.0 was released, and IOHO, Java Model 2 development has never been quite the same.

2006-12-12

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