HTML Server Pages - an alternative to JSP

Question

Your comments would be appreciated on an alternative approach for
developing web applications using HTML Server Pages (HSP).
Rather than convert the Server Pages to Java code, the approach
is to create the Server Page as an XHTML document and
process it as XML.
The id attribute is used to link the HTML tags to the servlet
code. For example:
<p id="greeting"> </p>
The servlet code uses a Framework based on the MVC design pattern. A
value is displayed by creating a Text Model object and associating
it with the id attribute.
The advantage of this approach is that the Server Page can be
validated against the XHTML DTD and there is a clear separation of the
HTML and Java code.
For more details see the Brill Software web site:
http://www.brillsoftware.co.uk
Thanks
Chris

Answer 1

Thank you 'maesj' and Robert for taking the time to post some very interesting comments.
Please find below my comments on the points raised.
Best Regards
Chris Bulcock
Also every page redirect, link goes through a kind of a commandservlet that processes the page?The HSP Framework follows the same approach as that used by the JSP Model 2 architecture. The entry point is a Java Servlet.
You can store and process JSP's as XML, too.The advantage of using XHTML is that a web designer can edit the pages using an XHTML aware editor such as Adobe GoLive and Preview them.
<p id="greeting"> </p>
What exactly does this do?The id attribute is used to connect the <p> tag with the dynamic content that is generated by the application. When displaying the page the Framework will get the Text Model that the application has created and insert the contents into the Text Element part of the <p> tag. If the Model contained "Hello World" the HTML sent to the Web Browser would be
<p id="greeting">Hello World</p>
How do you do loops?The HSP Framework supports a Table Model for the display of tables. The row HTML is duplicated for each row in the table.
I think it is a bad idea to use the id since this is normally meant to uniquely identify instances in an XML document. If you want to adhere to this rule you could easily insert the same contents twice in a single page.A number can be included in the id attribute to make it unique within the document. e.g. greeting-1, greeting-2.
Rather than duplicate the same content twice the common HTML can be placed in a single file and included in other pages as required. The <object> tag is used for this purpose.
How then does the data get into the XHTML element?The data is inserted by the Framework.
But you have to bind them together in some place.The id attribute is used to bind the XHTML tags to Model objects.
Plus: fixing the format to XHTML prevents such things as inclusion of other files. This OTOH would impove the options for a modular design.The XHTML <object> tag is used to include one file (View) within another. With the Brill Software web site the Menu bar and Footer are held in separate files and included into each page.
Unfortunately I did not find documentation there.The documentation is at:
http://www.brillsoftware.co.uk/bswebapp/bsservlet?cmd=DisplayCmd&view=UserGuide1
I would not buy such a framework since there are good and mature frameworks out there - for free.The cost of a framework needs to be considered in relation to the overall cost of a project. If a framework saves you time and effort it may be worth paying for. It depends on what value you place on your time and the time saved by using a particular framework.