【正文】 t support them and developers don39。re already convinced that Java technology makes for more reliable and reusable code than does Visual Basic, VBScript, or C++. Why go back to those languages for serverside programming? 3． Powerful Servlets support several capabilities that are difficult or impossible to acplish with regular CGI. Servlets can talk directly to the Web server, whereas regular CGI programs cannot, at least not without using a serverspecific API. Communicating with the Web server makes it easier to translate relative URLs into concrete path names, for instance. Multiple servlets can also share data, making it easy to implement database connection pooling and similar resourcesharing optimizations. Servlets can also maintain information from request to request, simplifying techniques like session tracking and caching of previous putations. 4． Portable Servlets are written in the Java programming language and follow a standard API. Servlets are supported directly or by a plugin on virtually every major Web server. Consequently, servlets written for, say, Macromedia JRun can run virtually unchanged on Apache Tomcat, Microsoft Inter Information Server (with a separate plugin), IBM WebSphere, iPla Enterprise Server, Oracle9i AS, or StarNine WebStar. They are part of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE。 you need to talk to the database. Going from the client to the Web tier to the database (a threetier approach) instead of from an applet directly to a database (a twotier approach) provides increased flexibility and security with little or no performance penalty. After all, the database call is usually the ratelimiting step, so going through the Web server does not slow things down. In fact, a threetier approach is often faster because the middle tier can perform caching and connection pooling. In principle, servlets are not restricted to Web or application servers that handle HTTP requests but can be used for other types of servers as well. For example, servlets could be embedded in FTP or mail servers to extend their functionality. And, a servlet API for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) servers was recently standardized (see In practice, however, this use of servlets has not caught on, and we39。t talk directly to the database. Even if it could, for security reasons, you probably would not want it to. The same argument applies to most other need the Web middle layer to extract the results inside a document. 4． Send the explicit data (., the document) to the client. This document can be sent in a variety of formats, including text (HTML or XML), binary (GIF images), or even a pressed format like gzip that is layered on top of some other underlying format. But, HTML is by far the most mon format, so an important servlet/JSP task is to wrap the results inside of HTML. 5． Send the implicit HTTP response data. Figure 11 shows a single arrow going from the Web middle layer (the servlet or JSP page) to the client. But, there are really two varieties of data sent: the document itself and the behindthescenes HTTP information. Again, both varieties are critical to effective development. Sending HTTP response data involves telling the browser or other client what type of document is being returned (., HTML), setting cookies and caching parameters, and other such tasks. Why Build Web Pages Dynamically? many client requests can be satisfied by prebuilt documents, and the server would handle these requests without invoking servlets. In many cases, however, a static result is not sufficient, and a page needs to be generated for each request. There are a number of reasons why Web pages need to be built onthefly: 1． The Web page is based on data sent by the client. For instance, the results page from search engines and orderconfi