Java Glossary : servlet womb

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servlet womb

A program than runs on a server on the Internet that hosts servlets. They may or may not also handle JSP, ASP, PHP. They are sometimes called Servlet containers or, even more vaguely, application servers. I object to the term Container since it already has a specific meaning. I object to the term application servers since it could refer to any program at all that runs on a server, not just something that supports Servlets. The problem with my term servlet womb, is that people will look at you funny, even if they know what you mean.

Notice the huge number of developers who are building JSP clones. In my mind they are all lemmings headed for early extinction. 100% server side computing is a fundamentally flawed concept. I propose something quite different to replace it.

Minimalist server, only 40K, only supports GET. Useful in debugging Servlets.

Servlet Wombs
Program	Notes
Acme
Allaire Cold Fusion	original, before ASP, JSP, PHP there was Cold Fusion, yet another way to blend code and HTML.
Barracuda
Cascade
Caucho Resin	fast, load balancing, JSP, XML, XSL. Free for non-commercial use. Also serves HTTP. Can be ganged with Apache HTTP server to handle the static HTTP serving.
Caucho Resin-EE	fast, load balancing, EJB, JSP, XML, XSL. Free for non-commercial use. Also serves HTTP. Can be ganged with Apache HTTP server to handle the static HTTP serving.
Enhyrda xmlc
ExpressO
eWave	JavaServer Pages, Servlet and Enterprise JavaBeans, Defunct.
Freemarker	Has is own way of embedding code elements in HTML. Opensource project. Excellent documentation.
Gemstone/J
James	formeraly JavaHTTPD.
Java Web Server	Sun's webserver, formerly known as Jeeves.
JavaHTTPD	now known as James.
jBoss	open source, EJB container.
JByte	Java Byte Template Engine
Jetty	Jonathan Revusky recommends it because it is pure Java, fast and open source, and because it did well on the iX Magazine benchmarks.
Jeeves	Sun's webserver, now known an Java WebServer.
Jigsaw	Cern W3C' server.
JRun Pro	Jonathan Revusky does not like it. I was using it. It seems to work ok, though I had nothing to compare it with. By Macromedia.
JServ	Apache Jakarta project frozen. Supplanted by Tomcat.
Maverick
JSTL	JSP Standard Tag Library auxiliary for JSP.
Open EJB	open source, EJB container.
Orion	fast, from Sweden.
PHP	Perl-like syntax.
ServletExec
Tapestry	runs inside some other womb.
Tea	Like JSP with more separation of presentation and logic. By Walt Disney.
Apache Tomcat	quite slow, but free, Very popular, especially on Linux.
Velocity	quite popular.
VQserver	No updates since 2000.
WebLogic	fast, extremely expensive.
WebMacro
Websphere	IBM's offering. Comes with a wheelbarrow full of documentation. Very expensive.
Webwork
Snigel

If you change the jars used by your JSP code, make sure you manually delete the generated class files (classes in the WEB-INF tree for Caucho Resin). The womb won't be smart enough to do that on its own and you will get all manner of NoClassDefFound errors.

ASP ¤ J2EE ¤ JSP ¤ PHP ¤ Project to Replace JSP ¤ servlet ¤ Wafer comparison of servlet wombs

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