Hello Friends I am little confused between these two terms!
1. Web Server
2. Application Server
Can anyone explain me the exact difference between these two terms?
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Hello Friends I am little confused between these two terms!
1. Web Server
2. Application Server
Can anyone explain me the exact difference between these two terms?
Web Server serves static HTML pages or gifs, jpegs, etc., and can also run code written in CGI, JSP etc. A Web server handles the HTTP protocol. Eg. of some web server are IIS or apache. An Application Server is used to run business logic or dynamically generated presentation code. It can either be .NET based or J2EE based (BEA WebLogic Server, IBM WebSphere, JBoss). A J2EE application server runs servlets and JSPs (infact a part of the app server called web container is responsible for running servlets and JSPs) that are used to create HTML pages dynamically. In addition, J2EE application server can run EJBs - which are used to execute business logic. An Application server has a 'built-in' web server, in addition to that it supports other modules or features like e-business integration, independent management and security module, portlets etc.
A Web Server understands and supports only HTTP protocol whereas an Application Server supports HTTP,TCP/IP and many more protocols. Also many more features such as Caches,Clusters,Load Balancing are there in Application Servers which are not available in Web Servers. We can also Configure Application Servers to work as Web Server. In short, Applicaion Server is a super set of which Web Server is a sub set.
Even if we take it literally, a web server serves web pages so an application server should serve with application (logic).
The application logic (here, the business logic) is embedded in some form, let that be an EJB or CORBA component, and the application server allows us to get the services provided by those components.
IMHO, the qualities such as load balancing, fail-over support, caching are all non-funtional requirements that are applicabale to any distributed application (web server, db server, app server etc.)
Application server is a server that provides XML web Services, WEb Applications and Distributed apps. You configure a member server with this role, and IIS COM+ and .Net Framework installs Automatically. You have the option of adding Frontpage server ext. as well and enabling or disabling ASP.NET. Webserver is designed for We site deployments and web based apps. It does NOT have the ability to use ADS, and it can't be made a DC. Application Server is a role so it can use ADS and can be made into a DC.
Summary: A normal web server can handle Http request means it can provide static web pages, images, css etc. For generating dynamic web contents it requires support for JSP, Servlets etc in Java & ASp in Microsoft respectively. So A java-enabled webserver means it has JVM & servlet engine which can run java servlets or JSp if it has JSP container. In such a case, the web server on receiving http request which can be handled by a servlet, passes it on to servlet which will handle it & may generate an HTML page which web server delivers to webbrowser. An application server can provide services based on various protocols including HTTP, meaning web service can be inbuilt or can be configured with it. Application servers serve application code to application clients. It provides several services like transaction processing, resource pooling i.e. database connection pooling, Security features, clustering etc.
You can also refer to this webpage for more details!
http://www.javaworld.com/javaqa/2002...webserver.html
I hope this helps you!