When shopping for a web host, or perhaps just looking to upgrade your existing hosting setup, you see a lot of checkmarks.  One of those green checkmarks you see might be for JSP.   So what is JSP?  JSP is short for JavaServer Pages.

After Microsoft tried to fill the hole left by complex and inefficient CGI scripts, they solve that problem, and also created a new problem.  Microsoft’s solution was Active Server Pages (otherwise known as ASP).  The problem with ASP was it limited you to Microsoft platforms and even the littlest mistake would bring your entire web site down.

In response to ASP, Sun Microsystems developed the JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology.

As for a dictionary definition for it,  you can think of JSP as a technology that allows a software developer to create HTML, XML or other documents dynamically.  JSP allows certain pre-defined actions (and Java code) to the embedded into static content.  Think of it as a way to write your web page based around the Java technology.

Another nice perk about JSP, is it uses Java, and the Java technology is not restricted to any server-specific platform.

To sum things up, with JSP, you can create a dynamic web page just by simply putting the corresponding Java code inside of your HTML pages.  The code is then executed by the web server, before being returned to the browser.