Re: Web server info

[Pete Helgren <Pete@xxxxxxxxxx>]

You got it right Vern.  The distinctions are difficult to maintain 
because there are increasing more "application serving" extensions to 
web servers so it is sometimes hard to tell them apart from Application 
severs  but you got the basics.  Web servers primary design focuses on 
serving HTML.  App servers usually have quite a bit of pre-processing or 
post processing activity that may include DB I/O, calculation logic, 
template rendering and the like.  The App servers generally have a web 
server built in since the final result is usually HTML. 

I have a Tomcat server that has one or two sites that are served 
directly to the web but in most cases the Tomcat server is "behind" 
Apache where the HTML is passed between the Tomcat and Apache servers.  
That can give you some more control and integrate "static" pages with 
more dynamic server application data (although there are several ways to 
skin that cat).

PHP is in the middle.  Apache hands off the page rendering and DB IO to 
the PHP processor, much like Tomcat, except that PHP doesn't have a web 
server (that I am aware of).  PHP is usually run as an Apache module 
(like a plug in) where Apache recognizes the PHP stuff by it's file 
extension and hands it off to the PHP module to process (usually 
returning HTML).

Many other subtle differences but you basically to nailed it.

Pete Helgren

Vernon Hamberg wrote:
> Pat
>
> My simple understanding!!
>
> Apache is a web server - it serves web pages - HTML stuff.
>
> Tomcat is an application server - it runs Java servlets and java 
> server pages that often or usually create HTML that a web server 
> sends to your browser.
>
> I see in a wiki article that .NET is considered an application server 
> environmet - ASPs are the web part of it, I think.
>
> Now that I've displayed my ignorance!!
>
> HTH
> Vern
>
> At 09:11 AM 11/13/2007, you wrote:
>
>   
> > What's the difference in the two...generally speaking,
> > between the Apache server and Tomcat ?
> >
> > After putting an example up yesterday,  I think my confusion comes
> > with all those AIX terms I see used. I had to start the LDAP server
> > but I had no idea why I needed to do that. That is chock full of very
> > unfamilar terms. The InfoCenter is a very poor excuse for a good set of
> > books on the subject.
> >
> > After a great deal of reading and experiments, I finally got the Apache
> > server running and the IBM example "Phone Directory" up and going.
> >
> > Waaaay too much tweaking and twisting to get something that simple
> > up and going.
> >
> > Did I lean anything ...probably.
> >     
>
>