Hi,
just to answer your original question:
- no, there is no attempt to develop a XSP taglibrary for Cocoon
(like X-Application taglib forJSP)
I see three basic methods to access Tamino from Cocoon:
- URL (access of response documents by URL)
- Java API (used in Cocoon XSP)
- JSP (Cocoon JSP Generator)
URL:
Instead of using file based XML documents,
you can use Tamino Command syntax to create an URL that
requests a response document from Tamino.
The response document can be formatted by XSL stylesheet transformation.
I suppose this approach is best for publishing and simple queries,
it’s not suitable for form based applications.
Disadvantage:
- only whole documents can be accessed;
- write access (create and update) is difficult to manage
Java API:
There are three API’s that allow access to Tamino:
- X-Application aPI
- Tamino API
- XML:DB API
I suggest you would use X-Application API instead of Tamino API,
because it’s more comfortable.
Also of interest is XML:DB, because it offers a generic way
to access XML databases(i.e. Xindice).
JSP:
You are free to build your own JSP-Pages and use them with Cocoon.
Although it looks like there is no advantage to common JSP,
there is a difference (or actually could be).
The idea is to strip all HTML code from the JSP and add HTML Code later by a XSL stylesheet.
This would result in a better separation of content and presentation.
In the best case you have one XSL stylesheet for your application,
and many JSP’ with a minimum of content.
This method will be investigated, at the moment it’s simply an idea.
From Cocoon point of view I would prefer XML:DB,
beacuse it’s generic, portable and an open standard.
(a generic XSP Taglib for XML:DB interface seems a good idea to me)
If you are free to choose a framework
and want to build small, standalone webclients for a Tamino Database
I would recommend that you use Struts with X-Application API.
I you are interested in any of my suggestions, you can contact me for assistance.
regards
Mathias