modelling JSP applications

[Lucy Smaile]

I'm new to JSP and have been wondering what's the best way to model an application? I was planning on using UML, but it doesn't really seem to lend itself to JSP and I haven't been able to find much information about it.
I will probably just use JSPs and Javabeans. I've identified classes which I thought would probably correspond to my database tables and Javabeans, but wasn't sure how to model the actual JSPs? Would you put those on the class diagram too? Are the forms on the pages also classes? How would you show the interaction between JSPs and beans?
Is there a better way than UML, or do you just use whatever bits of UML seem to be helpful?
How do people usually do it?
Thanks

[Lucy Smaile]

There must be someone here who models JSP somehow??
I found some stuff by Jim Conallen who has developed an extension to UML for web applications.
http://www.conallen.com/whitepapers/webapps/ModelingWebApplications.htm
I'll probably try using that - do you think that's overkill? What other ways tend to be used?
[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Lucy Smaile ]

[Frank Carver]

May I ask what information you want to convey with your "model", and to whom?
UML is a very flexible notation, but at its heart it is stil just boxes and lines which mean whetever you and the reader agree them to mean.
Do you want to show the data flows into and out of your servlets, JSPs and beans? Do you want to show some sort of system state diagram? Do you want to show client and server timelines? Do you want to show a class inheritance structure? etc. etc.
UML has lots of different drawing styles appropriate to different uses.

[Lucy Smaile]

I think I mainly want to model sequence and class diagrams (for me), in order to get good idea of what I'm trying to program before starting. I'm a student and it's the first time I've tried to program a largish project. I would feel very nervous about jumping into coding without having a formal kind of plan worked out first. Maybe I've just been too well brainwashed...??
I'm now planning to use separate classes on my models for my jsps as client pages and server pages (as suggested by JC - see link above) and for all the forms and beans. I think I should then be able to use these as a basis for coding.
But as I said, I'm new to all this and I was just wondering what other people do to plan web apps.
[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Lucy Smaile ]