Tutorials : Accessing a Database with the JSTL 1.1 SQL Tag Library :

Accessing a Database with the JSTL 1.1 SQL Tag Library

by Deepak Vohra

Suppose you need to access a database from a JSP page. Without a tag library, you would use JDBC code embedded in scriptlets to access the database. However, a JSP page with HTML and tag library tags is easier to read than a JSP page with scriptlets intermixed with HTML tags. Moreover, you would have to be familiar with the JDBC API. Plus, you don't have to create a custom tag library in order to access a database. Enter JSTL.

The JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) provides core tags for common structural tasks such as iteration and conditional processing, XML tags for XML processing, internationalization tags for formatting, and SQL tags for database processing. This article discusses the JSTL SQL tags for database access. Jakarta Taglibs provide the Standard Taglib 1.1, an implementation of the JSTL 1.1.

You'll see how to install the Standard Taglib 1.1 in a WebLogic server 9.0, which supports the Servlet 2.4 and JSP 2.0 specifications (Standard 1.1 requires a JSP container that supports these specifications). You'll use these to develop a JSP application which retrieves data from a database using JSTL SQL tags and displays that data in a table.

Preliminary Setup

• Jakarta Taglibs Standard Taglib 1.1
• WebLogic server 9.0
• MySQL Database Server
• MySQL JDBC driver Connector/J

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