Re: Vendor presentations

[Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx>]

[I don't understand this point, Nathan. A bean in its simplest form is really
nothing more than a structure of pointers, either to data or to methods.]

HTML templates are a lot like Beans.  When loaded into memory, they're simply 
structures of pointers to data.  I was just acknowledging the point that Seth 
made about his product generating more efficient code than what a programmer 
would write when using templates.  He pointed out, for example, that calling 
procedures to set field values in HTML templates added significant overhead, 
and he provided CGIDEV2 code and time measurements to prove the point.

Using methods to set Bean values in Servlets is a lot like calling the 
updHTMLVar() procedure in CGIDEV2.  Add a JSP interface that makes additional 
calls to extract Bean values when generating HTML streams, and I can just see 
Seth's point about his product generating more efficient code.

How significant is this?  I guess it depends.  Cross-product benchmarks would 
quantify the differences in performance, but as I said previously, using 
templates, JSPs, and Beans have the advantage of cleaner separation of code, 
which could have higher weight than performance.