Managing Java Server Pages in TeamSite

fiquebem

We have TS 6.5 SP2 and OD 6.2 on Windows Server 2000. We've separated our production Web server (IBM IHS server on Linux) from our production Application server (WebSphere/ColdFusion on Windows Server 2000).

Some of our websites have HTML/JavaScript pages along with Java application components. The user starts off the Web server, which redirects *.jsp requests to the App server.

We have DCRs, HTML pages, stylesheets, images and left-navigation/header/footer "include" files (SSI) all stored in TS. We don't have any JSP pages in TS (at least not yet), but we're looking for a way for the JSP pages to use the same stylesheets, images and include files used by the HTML pages. Also, we're looking for ways of managing the content of JSP pages from TS, short of deploying that content to a database and have the JSP pages query the database.

One problem is that, in JSP, the "includes" must be relative to the application container, right? So we can't deploy those look/feel and content files from TS to both the Web box and the App server box and expect the Java application to be able to include/reference those files, right?

We're using the Struts framework, so we'd have to be able to rebuild the application Web archive (.war) file each time we want to update the stylesheet, for example. I'm guessing we can do that with OD 6.2, but I don't think our Production Support group would like the content managers rebuilding the Web application themselves.

What is the best practice for managing the look/feel and content of JSP pages from TS? Is it common to manage JSP pages, if not full-fledged Java applications, from TS?

Many thanks,

S.