Reasons for Using Jboss Rather Than Tomcat Only

[Alec Lee]

I am using Struts2 - Spring - Hibernate on standalone tomcat server. However, I heard that someone is using Jboss while also running Struts2 - Spring - Hibernate web appli (without using EJB). Why Jboss is needed in such a case? Is there any benefits for using Jboss rather than standalone tomcat?

[kong song]

Jboss is an application server, which support EJB,JMS....right now it contains web server(Tomcat)
Tomcat is a web server only support for servlet an jsp

[Kees Jan Koster]

Dear Alec,

From the stuff you are using, there is no pressing need to go to JBoss. I found JBoss startup times to be horrible, so sticking with Tomcat saves you a lot of waiting.

If you are experiencing the kind of system loads that overload tomcat's connectors, switching to JBoss *may* help. From what I have heard, JBoss offers quite a good NIO-based connector.

Other that that. Meh. :-)

[Alec Lee]

Thanks Kees,

Does Jboss offer anything better than standalone Tomcat in terms of scaling up the appli (no EJB, no remote call) through clustering ?

[Kees Jan Koster]

Dear Alec,

Tomcat offers clustering, JBoss does too. Whether it is more effective depends on your application's needs. Since you're asking, I think Tomcat's clustering will do nicely for you. :-)

If you write your application according to the JEE spec and use Tomcat without relying on any of its Tomcat-specific features, you can move to JBoss (and endure JBoss start times) at any time in the future.