Question

What is difference between application server and web server? Please give explanation in briefly.

Answer 1

There are following difference between Application server and Web server:

1. Application Server also support HTTP protocol as well as some other protocol such as RMI/RPC. Web Server supports only HTTP protocol.
2. Application Server supports distributed transaction and EJB. Web Server only supports Servlets and JSP. 
3. Application Server can contain web server. JBoss or WAS has Servlet and JSP container.
4. Application Server provides various type of services like Connection pooling, Transaction management, messaging, clustering, load balancing and persistence. Apache tomcat also support connection pooling.
5. Application server are more heavy than web server in case of resource utilization.

Answer 2

Web Server:- Web server is a server which serves web pages.
                      Example:- Apache
                                       Tomcat
                                       Jetty
      
Application Server:- Application server is a server which hosts the business logic for a system.
                                Example:- JBoss
                                                  WebLogic Application server (Oracle's)
                                                  WebSphere Application Server (IBM)