Difference between JSP and ASP

JSP and ASP are both server-side scripting languages. JSP is Java based and is developed by Sun Microsystems, whereas ASP is developed by Microsoft and is also referred as Classic ASP. Whenever a browser requests a JSP or ASP page, the server engine reads the file, executes the code in file and returns the HTML output to the browser.

JSP is compiled, whereas ASP is interpreted. ASP.NET is a .NET based variant of ASP where the codes are compiled to improve the performance.

What is ASP?

ASP is a server-side scripting engine, which means the code that is written gets sent to the server for processing. ASP stands for Active Server Pages. Developed by Microsoft, ASP is basically used for dynamic generation of web pages. ASP uses scripting language which allow dynamic programming to develop interactive web pages which includes interactive user interactions with server processing of request and response.

ASP is an interpreted language which means the compiler interprets the compiling code. Also ASP is treated as partially object-oriented language.
In order to connect with database ASP language uses ADO (ActiveX Data Objects).
ASP is partial object oriented language; hence it doesn’t have the concept of inheritance.
It can have a maximum of four in-built classes, i.e., Request, Response, Session and Application.
Error handling support in ASP is less efficient as compared to that in ASP.NET.

ASP is similar to other scripting languages like PHP and JSP and it can support multiple programming languages like C# and JavaScript. ASP pages have the extension ".asp" or ".aspx".

ASP supports Component Object Model (COM) which enables ASP web sites to access functionality of libraries such as DLL.

What is JSP?

JSP stands for Java Server Pages. It is a server-side programming technology that enables the creation of dynamic, platform-independent method for building Web-based applications.

Java Server Pages are built on top of the Java Servlets API, so like Servlets, JSP also has access to all the powerful Enterprise Java APIs, including JDBC, JNDI, EJB, JAXP, etc.
JSP is primarily written in HTML language although Java code could also be written on it but for that you need to have JSTL or other such languages. JSP is simply a text document that contains two types of text: static text which is predefined and dynamic text which is rendered after server response is received.
JSP pages can be used in combination with servlets that handle the business logic, the model supported by Java servlet template engines.

JSP is one of the most widely used language over the web. JSP is compatible with HTTP request only. Session management in JSP is automatically enabled. Modifications in JSP can be done quite fast, as just need to click the refresh button and code changes would get reflected.

Difference between JSP and ASP

The following table compares and contrasts the different features of JSP and ASP −

Key	JSP	JSP
Stands for	JSP stands for Java Server Pages.	ASP stands for Active Server Pages.
Developed By	JSP was developed by Sun Microsystems and is maintained by Oracle.	ASP was developed by Microsoft and is maintained by them.
Cost	JSP is free to use.	ASP is paid.
Platform Independence	JSP being Java based is platform independent.	ASP is platform dependent.
Memory leak Protection	JSP has inbuilt memory leak protection.	ASP lacks inbuilt memory leak protection.
Security	JSP provides better inbuilt security mechanism.	ASP lacks an inbuilt security mechanism.
Extension	JSP pages are identified using .jsp extension.	ASP pages are identified using .asp extension.

Conclusion

ASP and JSP are popular scripting languages that are widely used for generating dynamic content for a webpage. The primary difference between these two is that: ASPs generally interact with a back-end environment built on Microsoft technologies, while JSP operates in Java-based environment.