Tomcat server

 Tomcat because is a multiplatform and comprehensive enough light, free server, free, for what we will discuss.Tomcat  is also often encountered in business projects, in development as in production.

If you want to learn about other existing servers and their differences, you know where to look. Wikipedia also offers a non-exhaustive list.

For more information, know that Tomcat gets its lightness makes it really just assembling a web server (query management / HTTP responses) and a web container (we speak timely container servlets, and return to what this means in practice). For now, just remember this is not a Java EE application server in the full sense of the term, because Tomcat does not fully comply with the specifications and does not support all technologies.


Web server / application server

In the diagram at the top of the page, we separate the web server and application server. These two components are required on the server side effect, they complement each other: the application server can not process an HTTP request, the web server can not run applications!

If these two components are essential, they are not necessarily separated. Tomcat and includes a web server, and is capable of operating independently (standalone) to treat both simple HTTP (static resources) applications and web applications. The idea is to change the connector (compared to our scheme at the top of the page) to use including HTTP requests and not sorted from the web server.

In some cases, this possibility is very interesting. It allows us to offer a complete web server by installing the minimum software. However, this is not an end in itself. For the sake of greater production, it is interesting to separate the two activities, if only to ease the task of each server. Tomcat can concentrate solely on running applications. This also saves memory and increases performance, allowing him to create such objects less ... In addition, in some cases, such as the establishment of a secure server (SSL), it is preferable to manage security on the web server, not on Tomcat, even if it is able to establish a secure environment .