Hi Senthamizh,
The difference between Web server and Application Server is that
the web server is used to process the User's request submitted to a system through a web browser. The web request must be received by a Web Server (IIS,Apache) of some sort. This web server must handle standard HTTP requests and responses, typically returning HTML to the calling user. Code that executes within the server environment may be CGI driven,
Servlets, ASP, or some other server-side programming language, but the end result is that the web server will pass back HTML to the user.
The web server may need to execute an application in response to the users request. It may be generating a list of news items, or handling a form submission to a guest book. If the server application is written as a
Java Servlet, it will need a place to execute, and this place is typically called a Servlet Engine. Depending on the web server, this engine may be internal, external, or a completely different product. This engine is continually running, unlike a traditional CGI environment where a CGI script is started upon each request to the server. This persistance gives a servlet connection and
thread pooling, as well as an easy way to maintain state between each HTTP request.
JSP pages are usually tied in with the servlet engine, and would execute within the same space/application as the servlets.
There are many products that handle the web serving and the servlet engine in different manners. Netscape/iPlanet Enterprise Server builds the servlet engine directly into the web server and runs within the same process space. Apache requires that a servlet engine run in an external process, and will communicate to the engine via TCP/IP sockets. Other servers, such as MS IIS don't officially support servlets, and require add-on products to add that capability.
Application Server:
When you move on to Enterprise JavaBeans (and other J2EE components like JMS and CORBA) you move into the application server space. An Application Server is any server that supplies additional functionality related to enterprise computing -- for instance, load balancing, database access classes, transaction processing, messaging, and so on.
EJB Application Servers provide an EJB container, which is the environment that beans will execute in, and this container will manage transactions, thread pools, and other issues as necessary. These application servers are usually stand-alone products, and developers would tie their servlets/JSP pages to the EJB components via remote object access APIs. Depending on the application server, programmers may use CORBA or RMI to talk to their beans, but the baseline standard is to use JNDI to locate and create EJB references as necessary.
And sorry i don't have any idea about Tuxedo.
