From Which Version It is considered or called as Application Server

[Chris Mary]

Hi,

This is one of the question which most people are not clearly able to answer

1. Does Tomcat is an application server?
2. From which version of tomcat, it is called as application server?
3. Is tomcat 9 version is an application server?

Thanks

[Tim Moores]

"most people" - so you've asked this question before? What were the answers? What were your answers?

[Tim Holloway]

Tim Moores wrote:"most people" - so you've asked this question before?

Why many people. Fine People. People come up to me all the time with tears in their eyes and say "Does Tomcat is an application server?" I tell them, "Does is!"

Yes, Tomcat is a (web) application server. It was designed from the beginning to be a web application server. It has always been a web application server, and if it ceases to be a web application server, I'm doubtful it would deserve to be called Tomcat any more.

[Peter Rooke]

Not sure you're asking the right question;

HTTP server - Apache https server.
Tomcat - Web application server.
WebLogic - JEE Application server.

So it might depend upon what people mean by an "application server", but I tend to follow the definitions above.  

[Paul Clapham]

Peter Rooke wrote:So it might depend upon what people mean by an "application server".

Of course. I don't believe that there's a Nomenclature Authority who provides the One Definition of "application server" either. And also, Wikipedia says

Wikipedia wrote:Apache Tomcat (called "Tomcat" for short) is a free and open-source implementation of the Jakarta Servlet, Jakarta Expression Language, and WebSocket technologies.

So as far as Wikipedia is concerned, Tomcat isn't an application server. Or at least, it doesn't state that it is an application server.

[Tim Holloway]

Sorry, Wikipedia. Tomcat runs WARs. Its default internal deployment directory is TOMCAT_HOME/webapps. It is very definitely a web application server.

Likewise, servlets, JSPs, and their accoutrements are all authoritatively defined in the JEE specs. Tomcat is therefore a JEE Web Application Server.

What Tomcat is NOT is a "full-stack JEE Web Application Server".

[Paul Clapham]

Which says to me that "Application Server" isn't a useful category.

[Himai Minh]

Nowadays, with Spring Boot , embedded Tomcat is used. So, we don't need to create war files and deploy to Tomcat.
By default, Spring Boot creates jar files, deploy the jar files to embedded Tomcat.

[Tim Holloway]

I would venture to say that Spring Boot falls under the heading of "serverless technology". Which actually, I've never seen formally defined.

Obviously however a Spring Boot app with an embedded Tomcat application server is only "serverless" in that you don't deploy it to a separate server, as it still serves http requests.

[Himai Minh]

Hi Tim,
That is interesting to know that Spring Boot is serverless. Nowadays, people use Spring Boot to develop microservices and deploy the microservices
to Docker/Kubernetes for scalability and redundancy.

[Tim Holloway]

Himai Minh wrote:Hi Tim,
That is interesting to know that Spring Boot is serverless. Nowadays, people use Spring Boot to develop microservices and deploy the microservices
to Docker/Kubernetes for scalability and redundancy.

Don't look at me to be an authority on "serverless". As far as I'm concerned you can't be "serverless" and still respond to Internet requests, but as far as I could define "serverless", that would be serverless.

Spring Boot lends itself very well to containerisation. Although it's not mandatory. I have a demo of my open-source recipe manager app (https://gourmetj.mousetech.com) running in Spring Boot directly on a server machine at the moment. It probably will get containerised at some point, though.