The first time a page is requested, it undergoes several conversions: from JSP to Java code to HTML. The first transformation from JSP to Java code causes a slight delay in performance that is easily avoided by precompiling your JSPs with the Java compiler.

You can precompile individual JSPs at application startup by specifying them in your web application deployment descriptor. Here is an example of what you’d add for a page called MyPage.jsp to web.xml in enclosing <web-app> tags:

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>MyPage.jsp</servlet-name>

  <jsp-file>/path/to/jsp/MyPage.jsp</jsp-file>

  <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

An explanation of each tag is as follows: