which is best server for developing java web applications?

Question

I'm confused. There are lot of servers(GlassFish, Tomcat, Apache,etc.,). But which one is used to implement easy for developing web application? Please suggest me. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Tomcat: it's free, and it's easy to work with. It's also very widely used and has lots of documentation and "herd knowledge" eg here at SO.

If you don't need EJB then it's a good safe choice.

Edit: Tomcat was until recently the "reference implementation" of the Servlet/JSP, although as pointed out by commenters, Glassfish currently has that accolade.

Answer 2

Glassfish v3 is a slow starter (~30 secs), but its hotdeployments are fast . It happens in less than a second, regardless of what you've edited: JSP files or Java classes. At least, that was my experience in combination with Eclipse and the Glassfish Eclipse plugin . Things which may matter a lot. And as a bonus, you've the opportunity to play with the awesome Java EE 6 API .

Tomcat 6.0 is quick starter, in ~3 secs it's up and running. Hotdeploys of JSP files is acceptable, after ~3 seconds you can F5 to see the new one in browser. But hotdeploys of Java classes is sometimes troublesome. Sometimes it isn't picked up at all, or sometimes it takes too long that it's actually faster to manually restart Tomcat (which however takes "only" 3 seconds).

Take your pick. I'm just using both.

Answer 3

I would go with either Apache's Tomcat or GlassFish.

Tomcat has the benefit of being around longer and having a broader group of users, but GlassFish comes from Sun itself. I've also heard that GlassFish's performance is above Tomcat.

Answer 4

The more commonly used "lightweight" servlet containers are Tomcat, Resin, and Jetty. They are lightweight because they implement only a few of the specifications (at the heart of which is servlet and JSP)/ The larger enterprise level applications JBoss, Glassfish, etc implement much more specifications on the server side.

Answer 5

I'd just suggest Tomcat. It's quick and easy to install, well documented, a support community behind it and very stable.

Answer 6

By experience i would say:
1.Apache Tomcat is quick in respoding to clients,easy to deploy apps,medium to install.
2.Glassfish is i think less quicj=k in responding,easy to deplu apps,easy to install,configure and use.

So i would suggest glassfish

Answer 7

I've usually used Tomcat with no problems. It's always been easy to setup and quick to deploy for me. Sometimes when using NetBeans I will use Glassfish too.