Ted Neward wrote:
> Does anybody else have a problem with a "production-quality" servlet
> engine also serving as the reference implementation for servlets
> and/or JSP? I have always operated under the belief that a "reference
> implementation" was supposed to be plain-vanilla, no optimizations,
> stick-to-the-letter-of-the-spec,
> if-it-ain't-in-the-spec-it-ain't-in-here kind of implementation. JSWDK
> was precisely this--it demonstrated servlets simply, cleanly (IMHO),
> without a lot of bells-n-whistles to get in the way. My concern is
> that Sun's stated intent (by calling it a reference implementation) is
> at cross-purposes with Apache's stated intent (to make it a
> production-quality engine). These are, for the most part,
> mutually-exclusive goals.
<vendor-bias>
Tomcat isn't really a reference implementation. It's the Apache group's
servlet implementation. Sun has chosen, for its own reasons, to select
the Apache group as its preferred servlet vendor. Calling Tomcat a
"reference implementation" is just marketing fluff.
Orion is a better reference implementation than Tomcat in the sense of
"if my implementation doesn't do the same thing, then it's probably
wrong." Orion implements the specs more faithfully than Tomcat does.
Unfortunately, this diminishes Sun's credibility as an impartial
standards arbiter, but that's Sun's choice. Microsoft doesn't even
pretend to be impartial with its ASP standard, and it's rather
successful, so maybe it's not a bad decision.
</vendor-bias>
Scott Ferguson
Caucho Technology
===========================================================================
To unsubscribe: mailto [EMAIL PROTECTED] with body: "signoff JSP-INTEREST".
FAQs on JSP can be found at:
http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/faq.html
http://www.esperanto.org.nz/jsp/jspfaq.html
