Apache Tomcat, also known as Tomcat Server, proves to be a popular choice for web developers building and maintaining dynamic websites and applications based on the Java software platform. It’s reportedly called 'Tomcat' web server because the founder saw it as an animal that could take care of and fend for itself. Similarly, Apache Tomcat is contributed to by developers all over the world, so it takes care of itself in that way.
So what makes Tomcat Apache different from other web or application servers, and why should you use it for your Java-based projects? Read on to find out.
What is Apache Tomcat, and what is Tomcat used for?
Strictly speaking, Tomcat isn’t a web server like Apache HTTPS Server or NGINX.
Started in 1999 and developed as an open-source project by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), Apache Tomcat is a Java Servlet container, or web container, that provides the extended functionality to interact with Java Servlets, while also implementing several technical specifications of the Java platform: JavaServer Pages (JSP), Java Expression Language (Java EL) and WebSocket.
But what is a Java Servlet? This is software that enables a web server to handle dynamic Java-based web content using the HTTP protocol. JSP is a similar technology that allows developers to create dynamic content using HTML or XML documents. In terms of their ability to enable dynamic content, Java Servlets and JSP are broadly comparable to PHP or ASP.NET, just based on the Java programming language.
By bringing all these Java-based technologies together, Tomcat Apache offers a “pure Java” web server environment for running applications built on the Java programming language.
Apache Tomcat vs Apache HTTP Server
Comparisons between HTTPS Server Apache vs Tomcat Apache can be confusing, since both have Apache in their name, and both are developed by the ASF. But the truth is that they’re two very different software packages.
While Apache is a traditional HTTPS web server, optimised for handling static and dynamic web content (very often PHP-based), it lacks the ability to manage Java Servlets and JSP. Tomcat Server, on the other hand, is almost totally geared towards Java-based content. In fact, Tomcat was originally developed as a means to provide the JSP functionality that Apache lacked.
Even with this in mind, a comparison between Tomcat vs Apache doesn’t come down to a direct competition. This is because it’s completely viable to run them side by side. So in projects involving both Java and PHP-based content, for example, it makes sense to have Apache handling most of the static and dynamic content, while Tomcat takes care of the JSP.
On its own however, Tomcat Server isn’t particularly efficient as a traditional HTTP server, so Apache is a much better choice for dynamic websites built solely with a language like PHP. But of course, when it comes to sites based entirely on JSP, Tomcat is the indisputable leader of the gang.
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