How does performance of JSP compare to PHP, ASP, etc?

Question

          "One thing I've found lately is that server-side Java (JSP) is,
          surprisingly, often omitted by web hosting providers. I thought that,
          Java being the ultimate web language, just about everyone would offer
          it, but it is fairly difficult to find at reasonable prices. Apparently,
          it is a relative resource hog. One guy I talked to said that they
          wouldn't be able to put more than three JSP sites on a server, whereas
          using PHP or ASP, etc, they could do an order of magnitude better."
          A friend of mine sent me that statement above. Is this roughly a true
          statement? (I'm posting this here just as a starter. It is not aimed at
          Weblogic at all...note that Weblogic is NOT even mentioned in the quote
          above.)
          The phrase "...everyone would offer it" pertains to the fact that my friend
          has been conversing with various 'web hosting providers', and he came to
          this
          'conclusion' after talking with a bunch of them in search of a company to
          host some of his client-companies web pages.
          Thanks in advance for your experiences.
          Cheers...
          Dave
          

Answer 1

On resource needs, in my experience, JSPs (and Java servers in general) require
          considerably more memory to run, but can actually reduce the CPU requirements.
          For example I had an application written in mod_perl, and when compared to the
          J2EE port, the mod_perl version consumed 1/2 the RAM, but the J2EE version
          was suprisingly much faster in execution (sluggish pages in the mod_perl version
          were very snappy in the J2EE version, on the same exact hardware.)
          But the biggest problem for ISPs is actually the management of the servers, not so
          much the hardware resources it takes. Today J2EE servers are still relatively complex
          to manage and configure. E.g., even a small ISP using Apache can easily(!) support
          dozens or even hundreds of virtual hosts for its clients... try doing that with Weblogic
          or any other JSP/Servlet/EJB engine... nightmare!!
          Take the deployment model as an example... in Perl/PHP/Frontpage-land the ISP
          can simply give each clients a few directories (e.g., the old 'cgi-bin' and 'public_html'
          dirs) and the client is self-sufficient. When a client changes something, they just ftp
          the new files into the directory and voila, it's done. No need for hand-holding from the
          ISP.
          In contrast one can't do that with J2EE servers today... applications must be packaged
          in some specific format, resources (like JDBC DataSources, JavaMail, security roles,
          etc.) must be setup often by hand, the administrator must contend with a variety of
          classpath and JSP compiler issues, the application then must be deployed to the server
          using a proprietary tool (which can fail), the server may need to be told to "reload" the
          new application, etc., etc.
          Not very easy to manage when you have lots of clients!! Not to mention that very few
          system administrators today in ISPs have a good understanding about Java in general;
          few can tell the difference between Jdk 1.0 and Jdk 1.4; and only a tiny minority will
          know something about running J2EE servers in production at all.
          regards,
          -Ade
          "David Cook" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
          >
          > "One thing I've found lately is that server-side Java (JSP) is,
          > surprisingly, often omitted by web hosting providers. I thought that,
          > Java being the ultimate web language, just about everyone would offer
          > it, but it is fairly difficult to find at reasonable prices. Apparently,
          > it is a relative resource hog. One guy I talked to said that they
          > wouldn't be able to put more than three JSP sites on a server, whereas
          > using PHP or ASP, etc, they could do an order of magnitude better."
          >
          > A friend of mine sent me that statement above. Is this roughly a true
          > statement? (I'm posting this here just as a starter. It is not aimed at
          > Weblogic at all...note that Weblogic is NOT even mentioned in the quote
          > above.)
          >
          > The phrase "...everyone would offer it" pertains to the fact that my friend
          > has been conversing with various 'web hosting providers', and he came to
          > this
          > 'conclusion' after talking with a bunch of them in search of a company to
          > host some of his client-companies web pages.
          >
          > Thanks in advance for your experiences.
          >
          > Cheers...
          > Dave
          >
          >