Text-based documents called Info*Engine JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Info*Engine standalone tasks control the information Info*Engine uses for everything it does.

The technology used in Info*Engine JSP pages implements the JSP specification, which is the product of industry-wide collaboration with industry leaders in the enterprise software and tools markets. Using this JSP technology allows you to rapidly develop and easily maintain information-rich, dynamic web pages that leverage existing business systems. As part of the Java family, JSP technology enables the development of web-based applications that are platform independent.

JSP technology uses XML-like tags and scriptlets written in the Java programming language to encapsulate the logic that generates the content for the page. Info*Engine JSP pages typically contain:

Consequently, you can create and maintain Info*Engine JSP pages by conventional HTML/XML tools.

Info*Engine standalone tasks are XML-based documents that provide you with a way to control the retrieval and manipulation of data outside of your JSP pages or application. The main difference between JSP pages and tasks is that JSP pages can contain content that generates data and then displays that data back to the user. Tasks generate the data, but they do not provide a way to display the data. The Info*Engine task compiler recognizes static XML components, JSP tags and scriptlets, and Info*Engine custom tags. So generally, your Info*Engine task can be formatted just like your JSP pages, but without any display elements such as HTML tags.

Info*Engine provides custom tags that encapsulate recurring functionality so that the same functionality can be reused in multiple Info*Engine JSP pages or Info*Engine standalone tasks. Using Info*Engine custom tags reduces the necessity to embed large amounts of Java code in JSP pages and in standalone tasks, and allows you to quickly create the pages and tasks that are required for your application. For example, the webject tag allows you to easily execute the Info*Engine webjects (described in the next section) that all Info*Engine documents use.

Both JSP pages and tasks use JSP specific syntaxes to execute their duties. This guide does not describe everything you need to know about writing JSP or XML documents. Instead, it describes the rules and enhancements of the markup language that are important to understand when you are writing Info*Engine JSP pages and tasks, and it documents the Info*Engine custom tags. For now, understanding the basic appearance of JSP pages and tasks, as well as how webjects, groups, and how the VDB works with them should give you a good idea of how Info*Engine manages information. The actual Info*Engine JSP and task rules are described later in this guide.