Originally posted by Anselm Paulinus:
To Srikanth Shenoy:
With JSTL and other standard tag libraries that support MVC architecture. Do you not think that struts will gradually loose its place to this emerging technology?
Anselm,
That is a very relevant question often debated. Here is my take on it.
JSTL provides replacements for most of Logic and Bean Tags, but not for HTML tags (and it never will - since HTML tags will remain coupled to the web controller). This is where Struts-EL comes into picture.
Check this page:
http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/faqs/struts-el.html It should give you a clear picture of what tags in Struts will be obsoleted by JSTL.
Also when you said, "other tag libraries that support MVC architecture", I am assuming you are talking about
JSF.
It is too early to adopt JSF for real projects.
JSF unlike Struts is not a framework, just a spec.
So all the vendors have to write their own implementation.
It is not proven, just released and none of the major vendors have even a alpha or beta release (in my knowledge).
Depending on its feature set in Struts 2.0 (like action chaining using interceptor stacks) and its integration with Tiles (or lack thereof in JSF) AND finally whether JSF would seemlessly integrate with the Portlet spec - all of this would go in deciding the adoption rate for JSF.
Plus think of how many enterprises out there have invested in Struts. They are not going to throw it away.
Struts and JSF will be complementary for a while.
Struts project, will always try to differentiate itself since it is more agile and also given the fact that JSRs are always slow, Struts is here to stay.