Web Server vs Application Server

Introduction

Web Server

A web server is a computer that retrieves stored web pages in response to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests from client computers. It comprises of a physical server, operating system, and software together. A web server can also be the actual software that processes the HTTP requests. It is composed of several components that control access to hosted web pages. One of these components is the HTTP server, a type of software that reads web addresses and HTTP requests. When the web server received a request by HTTP, it is sending back an HTML page. Web servers can be responding to HTTP request with a static HTML page, static HTML image, send redirect. And, to process some requests, web servers delegate the dynamic response generation to other programs.
Web server provides many advantages to the IT industry. Especially in a development environment, web server gives many advantages. Web server becomes a key factor as far as production hosting environments are concerned. That is why, a web server becomes an important part for best performing website.
Ex: apache HTTP server, Nginx, Apache Tomcat, oracle iplanet web server and etc.

Application Server

An application server exposes business logic to the client’s applications through various protocols. It generates dynamic content. according to the context of the request, application servers, can develop, the interactive parts of the website that can appear differently. this server is a software framework that translate data to provide the specialized functionality offered by service, application, or business. The information sending back and forward between an application server and its client is not blocked to simple display markup. In the application server logic does not take the form of static HTML because of it, the client can expose business logic as they want. most of the times, the server exposes this business logic through a component API. Application servers can manage its own resources. transaction processing, messaging and resource pooling are some of examples for that. Application server use fault tolerance techniques and various scalabilities.

Comparison

· Application Server is a term that sometimes is mixed with a web server. While a web server handles mainly HTTP protocols, the application server deals with several different protocols, including, but not limited, to HTTP.

· Application Server can do whatever Web Server is capable of. Because Most of the application servers have Web Server as compulsory part of them.

· Application server delivers dynamic content, but web server delivers the content using static HTML.

· Web servers have only web base applications, but the application servers can serve web and enterprise-based applications.

· Application servers uses multi-threading to support multiple requests in parallel, however web server not support for multi-threading.

· Application server facilitates longer running processes that are very resource-intensive, but web servers are facilitates web traffic that is not very resource intensive.