Actions vs Scripting Elements
Scripting elements (the other kind of element) have a similar status to action elements—they are “request-time” operations.
They are distinguished by syntax:
- Actions follow a strict XML syntax—scripting elements are largely unconstrained Java “inserts”.
They are also distinguished at a software engineering level:
- Scripting elements provide a quick way to achieve an effect, but depend on knowledge of the underlying servlet model.
- Actions and the associated tag libraries provide a potentially higher level of abstraction (meta-linguistic abstraction?)
As with all good libraries, actions should be easy to use, but they are relatively hard work to implement.